RICHLAND, Wash. – RICHLAND, Wash. – The Intelligent Mavericks, a team of seven students from the Richland School District, recently celebrated a significant achievement at the FIRST LEGO Championship in Houston.
They secured a top five position out of the other 160 teams competing, marking the first time a team from Washington State achieved this feat.
The students built a robot designed to tackle biofouling, which is the buildup of marine life on underwater sensors.
Eighth grader Lucy Cramer said the win wasn’t guaranteed, as the Intelligent Mavericks had left the last few competitions empty handed.
“Something kinda scary happened… One of our motors died midway through our first round. And then we had a dead motor for the second round,” said Cramer.
Despite the setback, the team managed to troubleshoot the issue in real time, even utilizing supplies from a nearby team.
“And then by the third round, we were able to fix it from that awesome team FSNgenium who gave us one of their motors, is really cool,” Lucy added.
Nick Cramer, a software engineer at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, coaches the team alongside his wife Carolyn. He says he remembers hearing about the league and knew he had to try it out.
“I just thought it was an amazing program where, kids that maybe want to be future engineers can get an opportunity to learn new skills in coding, engineering, building, and, like, test those out, in a competitive environment.”
For Samviti Prasad, another eighth-grade student, the experience has been invaluable.
“This is such a fun program. I’ve really enjoyed it. I’ve learned so much. Like, I learn more from this, and I think I have learned from school because, like, you don’t learn how to soar or solder at school, and it’s just really cool,” she expressed.
Bianca Zink, a seventh grader, also appreciates the experience, seeing it as a pathway to her future career.
“I want to be an engineer of some sort… I know that I want to take what I’ve learned from FIRST and apply it to a career in the future,” she stated.
