OUR PROGRAM
We are Assembly Required #39102, a FIRST LEGO League community team of ten 5th through 9th graders from the Edison and Ford Winter Estates in Fort Myers, Florida. Established in 2018, we have earned a bid to the State Tournament each year, since, but with the Covid-19 pandemic interrupting the 2019-2020 season and canceling our 2020-2021 season, we only got to experience that level of competition last year, when we won the top Innovation Project Award! We also won BOTH the 2022 and 2023 West Florida Regional Championship and the coveted bid to the FIRST World Championship in Houston, Texas, to compete amongst the top 108 FLL teams from 59 countries, where we WON the top Core Values Award!
This year, the team AGAIN won the West Florida Regional Championship with an unprecedented THREE-peat, sweeping the 2022, 2023, and 2024 Champion Award! In addition, the team won Robot Performance Awards at both the Qualifier and Regional level, and is preparing for the Florida State Championship in West Palm Beach on March 8-9, 2024, as well as the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University's Innovation Project Spotlight in Daytona Beach on April 27, 2024.
2023 World Championship FIRST LEGO League Core Values Award Winners!
2024 West Florida FIRST LEGO League Regional Champions, for the THIRD straight year!
How are we different?
Our community team is made up of ten students in 5th-9th grade from six different schools in two counties. Contrary to others in academic settings, our team is almost 100% student-led. This means the students pick and choose how to spend their time and manage practices, with the coaches only facilitating and guiding the students as needed, providing tools and lessons to scaffold student work, offering support, and garnering resources.
2023 West Florida Champions (above)
2022 West Florida Champions (below)
2023 SWFL Championship with our Mentees
Last year, we started a new mentee team, Batteries Included, of nine 4th-7th graders, most of whom had no previous robotics experience, and we are so proud of their accomplishments, winning the Robot Design Finalist Award at the West Florida Regional Championship, ranking 5th in the State Tournament and winning the Florida's Rising All Star Award in their very first year!
2023 FIRST Championship
We were so excited to win the opportunity to return to the World Championship, AGAIN, to represent our region and our state, where we not only enjoyed the experience of meeting all of the teams and learning about their projects, robots, and attachments to be inspired, but this time we were able to apply the lessons we had learned, inspired others, and WON the top Core Values Award out of 108 teams from 59 countries!
2022 FIRST Championship
Not only did we win our first bid to Worlds, but our local FIRST Tech Challenge mentor team Java The Hutts, also won a bid to the 2022 FIRST World Championship in Houston, Texas, where they competed amongst the top 180 FTC teams from around the globe and WON the Championship! What an exciting season to be able to represent our region at the International level, together, and to have so many amazing volunteers travel, too!