How Do I Find an FLL LEGO Team to Join?

I get this question asked a lot. People who see this amazing program at work want to know how they can get their kids involved too.

To be honest, it's tough to find open teams. Most are started by schools or really motivated parents with time and space. The established independent teams don't usually advertise if they have space because you could actually run a team with as little as three people (maximum is 10). It's a lot of networking to get onto those teams. They have to know you and your kid.

For FLL(First LEGO League for kids ages 9 - 14), here's the steps I would recommend:

1. Check with your child's school if they want to start an afterschool team. Find that motivated math or science teacher.

2. Look for independent organizations that you are involved with who might want to start a team. This could be churches, boy/girl scouts, neighborhoods.

3. Get on the Colorado FLL database that would allow you to put your child's info through the head of Colorado's FLL Mr. Ross Parent to pass on in case someone is looking for more members.

It's not impossible to find a team, but I found out 4 years ago that it was just easier for me to start a team. Start talking about the program with your child's friends and maybe you'll find there's a parent out there who would also want to do the same and you can all work together as coaches/mentors.

Below is an email that I am posting from Ross Parent who runs FLL in the state of Colorado. He gets this question all the time and here are his suggestions that mainly are steps to accomplishing #3 in my notes above.

___________________________________________________

Please direct parents to FLL.ColoradoFIRST.org. The footer of every page includes the statement "Questions and Comments about Teams are welcome, email: fll.teams at ColoradoFIRST.org". One to the coach looking for a team, and one to the coaches in that team's area encouraging them to include a new member.

I can forward your contact information to teams in your area and ask them to get in touch with you. Please provide a short description promoting your child to these other teams. This might include mention of your child's interests and accomplishments with LEGO, building or robotics, and more importantly a candid and honest assessment of your child’s social skills and abilities in teamwork, sharing ideas and communicating with peers.

Please include a mention of your availability as a parent volunteer and any skills that would apply to supporting the success of the team.

This information will serve to persuade coaches that you & your child might be an asset to their team. I will forward your information to teams in your area by way of blind copy, and ask them to get back to you. You will not receive their contact information unless they respond and share it with you directly.

Just to set expectations, however, you may find more success in networking with the parents of your child's friends that share their passion for LEGO to create a team.

Registration for FLL teams began the first week-end of May at http://gofll.usfirst.org. Be sure to READ the Important Registration Information page found there.

• Team registration is usually around $225.
• Each team must order a Field Setup Kit (FSK) for the current season's game - around $75 with shipping. Kit's will begin shipping mid-summer, July to August. Register and order early, as kits are distributed "first come, first served" from the LEGO company.
• A LEGO Education Mindstorms kit can be ordered from the site also - shop and compare. It's often a very good value for the quantity of parts and the overall price per part. 
• The Colorado FIRST LEGO League competition season runs from Labor Day to early December, with scrimmages in October, qualifiers in November, and the State Championship in December. International and National Open tournaments and the FIRST World Festival occur in the spring of the following year.

Please check the following information and networking links:

• Starting or finding an FLL team in Colorado
• Colorado Find-a-Team networking site
• National TeamUp networking site

A really great way to find out what FLL is really like is to help out at one of the events. This would be great for you to participate in. Remember, also, that Colorado FLL is an entirely volunteer organization.
Colorado FLL Volunteer page - be sure to check the attachments on that page, and invite a friend to join you!

Thanks for your interest in FLL!

Colorado Springs FTC Qualifiers - Our Rookie Team Takes First Place!

The Synergists (left) and the Hawks (right). Go SynerHawks!

We had our first round of competitions on Saturday. It was quite a long day at Coronado High School. It started at 7am and didn't stop until 6:30pm. The Synergists team that my son is on did very well. In fact they came in first place along with their Alliance partners, the Hawks who came from Roswell, NM.

FTC (First Tech Challenge) is such a different animal from FLL. I wanted to post some of the differences here so I could see a comparison:

1. FTC costs more than FLL. Our first year cost about $1,000 total every year after that it cost $700-$800. FTC costs are now up to $4,000 for our first year and still going. On a positive note, companies are more apt to sponsor robots that look fancier.

2. Much more emphasis is placed on the robot in FTC. Kids are drawn to the robot in both programs. However the add on of the Research Project in FLL makes it a little more well rounded depending on your point of view.

3. Both programs allow the kids to build very capable robots using predefined parts. There was so much creativity in both programs. It so impressed me how you could build such a different looking robot and it would accomplish the same tasks.

4. FLL has more missions. We could do upwards of 12 different missions in 2.5 minutes. FTC was more straightforward. We could do 3 - 5 missions, but that didn't make it necessarily easier. It was just that we didn't need to focus so much on all the different missions. There's more of a complexity to the building and programming of the FTC robots that makes up for the lack of need to focus on so many missions.

5. There may be more strategy involved with FTC. Although you need some sort of game strategy for both programs, generally the robots in FLL are limited to working on their side of the table except for the shared mission that lies in between tables. At the FTC competition last week, we saw how strategy overcame a better robot design. One of the robots during the alliance rounds moved back and forth to block (but not too long as to be penalized) their opponent from making points. This actually worked because that robot was a great scorer.

6. Temperamental. That was the word to describe the FLL Mindstorms robots during game time. Each time you had to line up your robots exactly right. Motors and tires would not work consistently because of battery or tire wear. Things just kept changing between each round. The only real way to have consistent runs was to make use of your sensors. With the Tetrix parts, we could get more consistency and during the teleop mode, the drivers had good control.

7. Both programs are supposed to be fun. For the younger crowd at FLL, that can venture into "goofing off". For the older crowd at FTC, they can venture into taking it too seriously and forgetting to have fun. Both need balance.