The Voorhees-based FIRST Lego League team recently took their skills across the country.
The Lucky Bananas, a Voorhees-based FIRST Lego League (FLL) robotics team, has just returned home from Detroit, where they competed at the FIRST World Festival and won the second place international trophy for robot programming.
The Lucky Bananas is an independent team with members hailing from Voorhees, Cherry Hill, Marlton and Mt. Laurel. Many local schools and community groups have their own teams as well. World Festival is the international championship for the FIRST robotics competitions, akin to the Super Bowl or March Madness. FIRST Lego League (grades 5 to 8) has 30,000 teams competing worldwide for a chance to be one of the top 108 teams who will be judged in Robot Design, Robot Performance, Research (this year’s topic was water), and Core Values at the international level.
While FIRST has been running robotics competitions for over 20 years, Southern New Jersey became a separate region last year, hosted by Rowan University. This year, South Jersey sent a team for the first time to World Festival. Next year, Rowan will also host the FLL, Jr. division for students in grades 2 to 5. FIRST is quickly becoming recognized as one of the most inspiring STEM organizations in the world, with spokespeople such as Will.I.Am and President Barack Obama.
Matt Reischer is the Lucky Bananas founder and head coach and a member of the South Jersey FLL planning committee. For more information: bit.ly/LuckyBananas, matt.reischer@gmail.com, or www.firstinspires.org
