A group of five national school children from a number of Donegal schools have reached the All Ireland Final in the ‘FIRST’ Lego League Masterpiece Challenge.
Alongside other young enthusiasts, the ‘Cully Coders’ have been working towards the tournament since October at weekly Lego Club meetings in Cully Hall, Laghey.
The team is made up of Zoe McElhinney (12) and Georgia Green from Robertson National School, Rebecca McElhinney (12) and Sienna Deane (11) from Glebe NS and Andrew Morrow (12) from Inver NS. Their Adult Volunteer Mentors are Stephen McElhinney, Scott McElhinney, Brendon Green, Ian Deane and David Morrow.
FIRST is an acronym for ‘For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology’. This science and technology challenge is aimed at 11 to 16 year olds. Teams are required to build a robot from Lego to tackle a series of missions and create new ways to communicate art across the globe using technology.
Once it was decided which children would represent the Lego club at the tournament, the newly named ‘Cully Coders’ began preparations in earnest.
On 7th February, they travelled to Monaghan to compete in the Monaghan Regional Tournament. Similar tournaments were held across the whole of Ireland during February, with a total of 160 teams from all 26 counties battling it out.
The Cully Coders did particularly well in the Robot Game section of the regional tournament. Of all the teams that competed in the regionals, four got more than 300 points in the Robot Game section. Indeed, Cully Coders achieved the highest score with a total of 330. They beat 139 other Irish teams in the Robot Game section! This is all the more impressive when one considers that a large number of their competitors were second level students, who prepared for the tournament during school time and were mentored by their teachers.
Their success at the Monaghan Regional Tournament earned the Cully Coders a Wild Card place for the All Ireland Finals which will take place in Dublin next week.
At the Finals, the Cully Coders will be competing against 23 other teams, including teams from Northern Ireland.
They have been working hard since the Regional Tournament to up their game and code their Lego robots to successfully complete even more challenging missions. Each completed mission earns the team a particular score and some missions attract more points than others.
It will be a challenge for the Cully Coders as some of their opponents have already seen what this young team is capable of and will no doubt be working hard to improve their Robot Game skills. Good luck to the Cully Coders as they head for the Finals!
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