Tolland Team Shines at First Lego League Event

On Saturday, the Tolland JamCatz participated in the 14th Annual East of the River First Lego League Robotics Competition at Tolland High School.

A total of 19 teams from throughout Connecticut participated in the tournament.  

The Challenge of this year’s event was “Nature’s Fury” which focused on analyzing ways to better deal with extreme weather.

The FLL event has three parts: the Robot Game, the Project and Core Values.

The Robot Game is a timed contest to get a team-built robot to complete obstacles that relate to problems and challenges associated with extreme weather, like rescue, storm cleanup and the movement of critical supplies.

For the Project, teams researched extreme weather in the world and identified problems faced before, during and after extreme weather events.  Based on their analysis, the teams created an innovative solution to better handle these events and presented their solution to tournament judges.  

The Tolland JamCatz won the Champion’s Award, which "celebrates the ultimate success of the mission and FLL values."

Team members are Josh Quimby, Anna Roberts, Madalyn Reagan, Cate Fischer, Andrew Lavertu and Ted Fischer. Cate is a fifth-grader at Tolland Intermediate School. The rest of the JamCatz Team members are seventh-raders at Tolland Middle school.

Tolland, along with six other teams, including the FLL team from Vernon, are advancing to the State Championship to be held on Saturday, Dec. 7 at Central Connecticut State University.