Bloomfield Hills Middle Schoolers Bring Home Robotics Title

Ten 7th graders at Bloomfield Hills Middle School were awarded grand champion honors at the First Lego League (FLL) robotics program tournament in White Lake last Saturday.

The state championship is designed for students ages 9-16 and is intended to get them excited about science and technology while teaching them valuable professional and life skills.

The team, named NXT Lightning, took top honors for their performance the Food Factor Challenge, where teams of 10 students and an adult coach program an autonomous robot to perform scored tasks on a themed playing field to solve a problem they identified. The competition was at Lakeland High School and comprised of 48 teams from around the state.

"Our kids really represented BHMS with great pride," coach Ellen Tener said. "They worked really hard all season and excelled in all areas: Research and presentation, core values and teamwork, and mechanical design and programming. We are so proud of them."

Members of team are:

Jack Connolly, Neal Doshi, Dominic Gould, Spencer Haisha, Brandon Hannawa, Abby Huston, Jordan Long, Gianni Morelli, Tiger Ruden, and David Tener. The coaching staff consists of Ellen and Hampden Tener, Kathy Connolly and Andover High School student mentor Justin Lopas.

State and national competition champions are selected to compete at the international level by lottery. Unfortunately, the White Lake competition was not selected to send their champion, so NXT Lightning will not compete at the FIRST World Festival. There will, however, be opportunities to compete at invitational tournaments held worldwide in the spring.