RoboScouts earn spot in national competition

Third time’s a charm for the Kalispell RoboScouts, a robotics team made up of Girl Scout Troop 3709 members, who are the Montana State FIRST Lego League champions. The win earned them a spot to compete on the world stage in April.

After three times competing at state, the girls outscored more than 70 teams to bring home the first-place trophy.

“State was kind of wild,” said teammate Lexi Nunnally, a 15-year-old sophomore at Glacier High School.

Other team members include Jessie Chadwick and Katie Eberhardy, both 14-year-old freshmen at Flathead High School and Kennedy Dortch and Zia Walker, both 13-year-old eighth-graders at Kalispell Middle School.

In other awards, the Tech Crusaders of West Valley School were runners-up in the mechanical design category.

Prior to state, every team received the same Lego Mindstorms kit in the mail, according to Troop 3709 leader Krista Nunnally.

For the state competition, teams developed, designed, built and coded the Lego Mindstorms robots to perform autonomous missions. The competition was a battle to see whose robot could complete the most tasks in 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Another part of the challenge involved competitors to solve a real-world problem. This year’s theme was City Shaper, where participants were challenged to think like engineers in building a better world.

Dortch gave an example of a mission.

“One of missions was you had to get a lever on this crane to release a little cube. That was 30 points,” Dortch said. “Then it was 30 points for moving the cube to the circle.”

For the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Championship and World Festival, Krista Nunnally said the team will do some enhancements to improve the efficiency of their robot, which they named Karen.

Dortch said the team is also working on upping their game in building their innovation project, which involves identifying a problem based on the competition theme and coming up with a solution. Rather than using Popsicle sticks and paper to build a model for their innovation project, Krista Nunnally said the girls are going to visit Flathead Valley Community College to learn how to 3-D print objects such as sidewalks.

“We’re so excited to get a more sophisticated looking model,” she said.

The RoboScouts are now raising funds to level up at the world competition where they will be among an estimated 30,000 students from more than 70 countries, according to www.firstchampionship.org. The team will also participate in the World Festival, which is an opportunity for teams to showcase where they are from by decorating booths in a convention-style setting.

“I’m most excited about meeting people from around the world,” Lexi Nunnally said.

The team is seeking sponsorships from businesses to help fund travel and lodging expenses, registration fees and costs to ship equipment, which Krista Nunnally estimates will be $18,000 to $20,000. The RoboScouts have started a GoFundMe campaign to raise $10,000 in funds. As of Wednesday, the GoFundMe campaign had raised $4,505 for the team.

As Girls Scouts, the team also will be using some proceeds from selling cookies door-to-door and online beginning Feb. 7.

To donate visit gf.me/v/c/ckk/RoboScoutSquad2020 or email roboscoutsquad@gmail.com .

For more information about the RoboScouts visit https://www.roboscoutsquad.com/world-championships.

Reporter Hilary Matheson may be reached at 758-4431 or hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.