Legos come alive at robotics competition

Every child has played with Legos at one point or another, but many children would never think those little building blocks could be the ticket to impressing some of the top engineers in the state.

That was the case a few weekends ago, when Valley students participated in the state championships for Lego robotics.

Students in the sixth- through 8th-grades designed and programmed Lego robots to perform a number of tasks while moving around a miniature obstacle course, including removing rocks from a soccer field, harvesting "fruit" from a tree, repairing a broken draw bridge, making a windmill spin and moving houses along the course as they collected barrels of "toxic waste" for transport.

The team from Academy Charter School finished fourth out of 32 teams, in their first Lego robotics event.

The Husky team from Academy Charter School thanked their coach, Bob Frost, for the successful showing.