OKEECHOBEE — On April 10, the FIRST LEGO League (FLL) Challenge Team 38851 advanced to the South Florida FLL Regional Championship.

The FLL team consists of six members from Okeechobee County. The team is a community team, meaning the team is not organized or sponsored by a school. This is the second year a team from Okeechobee County has participated in FIRST LEGO League Qualifying event and the first year they have advanced.

Over the past six months, the team met weekly to complete projects in three categories. The FLL Qualifying Tournament includes three categories: Core Values Project, Innovation Project, Core Values project, and a Robot Design project. The theme this year was “RePlay,” where projects had to improve the physical health of the community members.

Core Values, focused on standards such as discovering new skills and ideas, having an impact on the world with what was learned, working together as a team, and of course, having fun. During this category, the team was judged on the way they demonstrate the core values by completing a task together while under pressure.

After many ideas, the team decided to develop a fitness app for their Innovative Project. This app was designed for people in wheelchairs and is inclusive to most community members. The team spent hours researching current fitness apps and speaking with community members to understand the importance of fitness.

Their robot design (made out of a LEGO Mindstorm EV3) completed various obstacles where the team had to program or code the robot, while explaining each move to judges, to perform specific tasks.

Because of their hard work as a team, they will compete at the regional level taking at the South Florida Science Museum. At this competition, Team #38851 will compete against the region’s top teams in hopes to make it to the State First Lego League competition.