On Dec. 15 2024 the UHS Robotics Team hosted their second annual FIRST Lego League (FLL) Competition. Since they began hosting this competition, it has been a huge success for the Urbana CryptoHawks and it’s already become an event beloved by the wider Frederick community.
The FLL Competition is a robotics competition where elementary and middle school students construct and code Lego robots to complete a wide range of tasks. This year the competition is being hosted with a combined effort from UHS’s FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) Team, The CryptoHawks, and the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) Team Cyber Chaos.
This year 25 teams competed with each team consisting of around eight students. Six of these teams were FLL Explore teams and the remaining 19 were FLL Challenge teams. The Explore teams worked in the auxiliary gym and the Challenge teams competed in the main gym and cafeteria.
Saanvi Kakarla (Class of 2028), a member of Urbana’s FTC Team, explained the difference between the two, saying that, “FLL Explore, which is for 6-10 years old, is the younger version of FLL Challenge. [FLL Explore] have projects that they show off to reviewers and that’s how they win awards.”
FTC member, Vrishabh Kolluru (Class of 2028) explained further that, “[FLL Explore] is more about creativity and an introduction to STEM. It sets up that foundation for them to later participate in the FLL Competition.”
Each explore team had a tri-fold poster and small display for their projects. At the beginning of the event, groups of kids were exploring the event, while students and parent volunteers went to work on tracking what each teams project excelled at. Teams were judged on several categories such as their teams model, poster, and how well they demonstrated FLL’s core values.
The FLL Explore section of the event ended at 11:30 a.m. Each of the teams that had been working hard for the project were able to walk away happy and satisfied. Many stayed afterwards for concessions in the cafeteria and to watch the older kids participate in the FLL Challenge event in the main gym.
The FLL Challenge was a competition using Lego mindstorm. Aashritha Amirineni (Class of 2026), who helped with the event last year, explained that Lego mindstorm, “Is a little box, you input the code and it goes along a path and completes all the missions it has to complete in order for the team to get points.”
Each group had 2 minutes and 30 seconds to score as many points as possible for their team. Furthermore, the competition was completed in three rounds, each team getting three chances to score as many points as possible. Then at the end of the event the team’s final score for the competition would be the highest score achieved among the three rounds. This way, if there were any technical malfunctions, teams had a chance to recover, learn, and adjust.
One of the referees for the event and CryptoHawk’s Mechanical lead, Aidan Shranatan (Class of 2025), explained how the competition worked more in depth, saying that, “Each robot runs entirely on code, following a pre-planned pathing. The kids input code to complete pre-planned tasks, with the teams being able to complete those tasks in any order they wanted.”
Each year FIRST has a different theme for their competitions. Kakarla helped explain this years theme more by saying how, “This year [the theme] is ‘Under the Sea’. They have a Lego shark with a tracker and they have to get it back to its ‘habitat’. There’s also different missions related to that same theme of the ocean and STEM.”
The planning behind this event started back at the beginning of the school year, Mr. Joshua Holmes, the advisor of the team, notified the school staff beforehand to get approval for the event. Amirineni also explained how the club further had to incorporate the entire UHS community explaining that, “We’re having some UHS [STEM] clubs come in and have an activity section at the event. It’s one of the various ways we’re trying to make it about community.”
Additionally, the FRC and FTC had a demo location for letting the kids drive the robots so they could feel what the FRC team feels. This allowed kids to get deeper into STEM, particularly the T part of STEM which is Technology.
They are doing this to introduce these different clubs to kids, in the words of Public Relations Lead Richard Gu (Class of 2025), “[We are] inviting other UHS STEM clubs to the event to demonstrate to kids how these different clubs work.” Two of these clubs were Science National Honor Society and the Youth Movement Against Alzheimer’s (YMAA).
While building the community and connection between UHS students this event also serves the interests of the broader Frederick Robotics community. Before they first hosted this event last year Amirineni explained how, “[FLL teams] always had to drive to Bethesda or Rockville, that’s a 45-minute drive for many families”
Further, Gu explained, “Before [UHS hosting] FLL, this qualifier, there weren’t a lot of opportunities for kids to compete in Frederick. [Urbana] hosting this event allows them to compete more.” With a large auditorium in Urbana and a dedicated base of robotics students the team realized they were able to make this opportunity a lot more accessible for many across the local area.
Now this is when the school’s FRC team comes to clutch, they are now hosting the tournament here in Urbana which is only a 7.5 mile drive from the center of Frederick, meaning parents don’t need to worry about distance or time because of the close vicinity of the competition. It may still be around over 10 minutes, but it still beats driving 45 minutes to and back from competition.
Another good thing about this close vicinity is that grownups don’t need to worry about leaving their kids here because if something happens to them they can come quickly and on-time from shopping, work or etc. Lastly, another benefit of the range is that parents and kids don’t have to wake up as early meaning more sleeping time which equals to a well-rested person whose brain will function at their best to avoid any mishaps on the playing field.
This event is so important for the community and for these kids. This is an opportunity many would be very disappointed to miss out on. FRC member, Eric Jiang (Class of 2027) explained, saying, “It was incredible seeing kids of all ages come all together to participate and even watch… This is an event that’s more than competing robots, it brings the community together really well.”
