First Lego League Tournament Cancelled

Bad weather has sidelined a chance for area students to show off their skills.

The Tri-County FIRST LEGO League Tournament, which was slated for tomorrow at Tri-County Technical College's Pendleton campus, has been called off.

Twenty teams comprised of students from Upstate elementary and middle schools were set to compete in the regional qualifying tournament. Around 200 students had been set to attend.

FIRST LEGO League (FLL) is a program created by the FIRST organization. It introduces younger students to real-world engineering challenges by building LEGO-based robots to complete tasks on a thematic playing surface. FLL teams, guided by their imaginations and adult coaches, discover exciting career possibilities and, through the process, learn to make positive contributions to society.

The event is comprised of the robot game, robot design, research project and core values.

In the robot game, teams build and program an autonomous robot using LEGO MINDSTORMS technology to score points in 2.5-minute matches on a themed playing field, according to the FIRST website.

In the project, teams explore an actual problem that today's scientists and engineers are trying to solve, develop an innovative solution to that problem and share their findings.

No word yet on if and when the tourney will be rescheduled.