On May 21-22, 2011, team Monkey Madness, sponsored by IEEE Huntsville Section, competed in the FIRST LEGO League (FLL) North American Open Championship robotics tournament held at Legoland in Carlsbad, CA. They advanced to this tournament by winning the Alabama FLL Championship tournament held in December 2010 for the third year in a row. Their team consists of seven students from Hampton Cove Middle School and is coached by Dr. Kim Daugherty. 76 teams participated in the FLL North American Open from around the country as well as teams from Canada, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. Monkey Madness won Core Values Gracious Professionalism, second place. This prestigious award recognizes teamwork, mentoring, and friendly competition. Dr. Daugherty has coached FLL robotics teams for the past five years, consisting of elementary and middle school students. Click here for tournament details.

Monkey_Madness​

FLL is a global program created to get kids excited about science and technology www.usfirst.org/fll. Geared for ages 9-14, FLL utilizes theme-based challenges to engage kids in research, problem solving, and engineering. This year, approximately 17,000 teams worldwide competed in FLL tournaments. The cornerstones of the program are its core values, which emphasize contributions of others, friendly sportsmanship, learning, and community involvement. Each annual challenge has two parts, the project and the robot game. Working in teams of up to 10 kids and guided by at least one adult coach, team members have about 10 weeks to: 1) build an autonomous robot that will, in 2 minutes and a half minutes, complete pre-designed missions, 2) analyze, research, and invent a solution for a given assignment, and 3) create a clever presentation about their solution to perform in front of a panel of judges. The culmination of all that hard work is participation in an FLL event. FLL events are much like sporting events! Referees monitor and score the robot game. Judges review team presentations. Teams earn awards and trophies. It’s a pumped-up environment with music and excitement, and there is a ton of cheering.