Many thanks to the LigerBots, Newton’s high-school robotics team, for again hosting the FIRST Lego League (FLL) Massachusetts Eastern Championship yesterday. This year’s event featured the 24 FLL teams in Grades 4-8 that qualified for the event from across eastern Massachusetts, including three teams from Newton: The Selfless Shellfish, Lazer Robotics, and Fuego LEGO. Teams competed in robot matches and in their presentations of both their robot designs and their research-based innovation design projects.  All activities were based on this year’s transportation-focused FLL theme, Cargo Connect (see video and overview).

At yesterday’s championship, Lazer Robotics received the award for achieving the highest score in the robot matches.

Team Fuego LEGO — all 7th graders at Oak Hill MS — have been together for three years, having started at Bowen Elementary. They have been working on their robot since this summer and qualified for this event by winning the Core Values Award at an FLL competition in Springfield earlier this month, which was featured in the local TV news.

The Selfless Shellfish — also 7th graders at Oak Hill MS — started at Zervas Elementary. They did very well yesterday, coming close to high score in the robot matches and working more smoothly than their “nail-biter” performance at the recent qualifying competition in Easton. They programmed their robot in Python, a more challenging language than Scratch, and together they built a library of code for robot maneuvers that all team members could share.

And mentor Greer Tan Swiston won the Outstanding Volunteer award.

Due to Covid, this year’s championship was not open to the public, and the Ligerbots were not able to host the wonderful STEM fair that has accompanied the event in earlier years.