LCATs (La Crescenta Adventure Troop), a FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) LEGO team consisting of five sixth grade girls from the Girl Scout Cadettes troop 3481 from the La Crescenta Glendale Service Unit, recently took part in the organization’s league championship tournament. The girls attend Monte Vista Elementary School and St. James – Holy Redeemer School. The tournament finished the FIRST LEGO season, which begins in August and continues through December. The LCATs are coached by Paul Backes.

Among the 39 teams competing in the championship tournament on Dec. 9, the team earned third place overall in the Los Angeles region. They also received the first place award in mechanical design and in robot performance, and seventh place in core values. Due to their performance, they were invited to the FIRST LEGO League Uruguay International Open in Montevideo, Uruguay, May 30 – June 1, 2019.

This is the girls’ second year as a team in FLL.

FLL includes teams from fourth through eighth grades. An important aspect of FLL is how the teams demonstrate core values. Mentor Lyn Repath-Martos is credited with providing the LCATs with a mission model from her other Girl Scout teams; the team needed the points that it scored on that mission in order to achieve its first place robot performance. 

Though the girls haven’t yet decided whether they will be traveling to Uruguay, if they do attend the Uruguay Invitational in May 2019, the girls will have the opportunity to compete with teams from all over the world – an opportunity to share their passion for STEM with a much broader audience of like-minded individuals. All teams will have competed in the FIRST LEGO League Into Orbit challenge, and will have worked hard to understand the challenges of long-duration space flight. Team members have spent hours prototyping robot and attachment designs, and working out different strategies and mission sequences for playing the Into Orbit game.

Submitted by
Paul BACKES

  Paul BACKES