On Sunday, day two of this year’s state championship, our team had the privilege of having an outreach booth and displaying our robot to the hundreds of FLL-ers. Throughout the entire day, teams and spectators were able to stop by and watch our robot in action. It was an amazing experience to answer all of the questions and demonstrate our robot to the general public; furthermore, it was an absolute delight to hear all of the students and kids saying that, in the future, they would like to be on an FRC team.

In addition to Neutrino members operating the booth, we had a lot of other members volunteering on both days of the event. Varying from timers to team helpers, Neutrinos were all over the ISU campus. We had a blast meeting all of the unique teams and watching their performances!

Here is a time-lapse video of our outreach booth:

Over the past FLL season, we were excited to continue and expand our mentor program from last year. Twelve Neutrinos mentored eight Story County Area FLL teams. In this volunteering opportunity, we worked hard to give the teams guidance and advice about programming, robot design, the project, presentation, and core values. The teams were  prepared for their competition this year, and two teams won awards that qualified them for the Iowa State Championships. With this program, we were able to work with them more often and more in depth. Over 70 students in FLL were impacted, and we volunteered for a total of over 130 hours.

In addition to mentoring teams, we also organized a scrimmage at the Ames Middle School in order to prepare the teams for competition and present their work to their family and peers. We also sent 14 volunteers to the team’s regional competitions at the Marshalltown Regional and the SCI Regional.

With the conclusion of FLL, our team is looking forward to mentor the FLL Jr teams into the Spring.

Are you coaching or mentoring a FLL team? Then our new FLL resource page is for you! Team Neutrino has worked with Ames Middle School FLL coach Stacia Steward to release her guide for coaching FLL Teams and it is now available here. Check it out!

On Saturday, September 19th, Neutrinos and mentors gathered to assemble FIRST Lego League mission model kits that will be used in Iowa Regionals and the State Championship. In total, we made about fifteen kits. This was a great opportunity to help grow and maintain our state’s great FLL program.