Middle School FLL Robotics is very pleased to report a wonderful season this year. Out of over 400 teams who competed this season, 60 teams advanced to the NTX Championship. As you know, all five of our teams advanced this year!

During the NTX Championship on Saturday, February 9 the Hockaday teams excelled in every area of the competition. Judges, referees, and coaches commented on their knowledge, poise, spirit, and extraordinary organizational skills. We are so proud of these five teams for everything they accomplished.

On February 9, those teams traveled to Parish Episcopal School for the championship competition. The Intergalactic Unicorns (Ayla Sumer, Savannah Frederiksen, Megan Manning, Alex Blue Baron, and Shifa Irfan) won the Project Research award. This award recognizes a team that utilizes diverse resources to formulate an in-depth and comprehensive understanding of the problem they have identified. The Hockanauts (Stella Wrubel, Helen Taylor, Yanet Bisrat, Anna Crook, and Wonder Cather) won the Project Presentation award. This award recognizes a team that effectively communicates the problem they have identified and their proposed solution. And…Saturn V (Sydney Slay, Jayna Dave, Nina Dave, Celine Ebert, and Anika Kapoor) won the 1st place Champions Award! This award recognizes a team that embodies the FLL experience, by fully embracing Core Values while achieving excellence and innovation in both the Robot Game and Project. They will be competing at the World Festival in Houston in April.

In addition, only 200 teams in the world are nominated for the prestigious Global Innovation award. There were four nominations given for our region, and three of our teams received a nomination! The FLL Global Innovation Award is designed to showcase the real-world, innovative solutions that FLL teams create as a result of their projects. The Intergalactic Unicorns, Hockanauts, and Saturn V will apply for one of twenty spots as Innovation Ambassadors. These ambassadors will be given many opportunities including bringing their projects to market and patenting their product.

We would also like to acknowledge the Space Daisies (Tarini Gupta, Christina Dong, Angelina Dong, Deniz Gurun, Sena Asom, and Ai-Vy Ho) and the Shooting Star Daisies (Ashna Tambe, Anisha Puri, Kimberly Zhang, Finley Burke, and Grey Golman) for their excellent performance at the NXT championship. They had a very strong showing!

I would like to thank Laura Baker and Lisa Dwinal for their dedication this season as well as all of the many supporters who have come out to cheer us on. We have eleven trophies from this season – where are we going to put them all?