EDWARDSBURG — The Eddy Currents 2.0 FIRST Lego League robotics team completed another season on Sunday, Dec. 8 at the state championship tournament in Mason, Michigan.

The team was awarded the third place Champion’s Award. This award celebrates the team that embodies the FIRST Lego League experience by fully embracing the FIRST core values while achieving excellence and innovation in both the robot game and project, said officials with the Eddy Currents. 

The Eddy Currents were one of 48 teams to compete the event. Prior to the state tournament, they competed at the Lancer-Bot Mania regional qualifying tournament in Stevensville, Michigan on Nov. 16. At that competition, they were awarded grand champion for the third year in a row and received the Robot Performance Award for achieving the highest robot game score of the day. The team has advanced to the state championship four out of the last five years.   

The Eddy Currents is a community team based in Edwardsburg. Team members Aidan Dohm, George Scupham, Mya Eberlein, Owen Andress and Michael Wright attend Edwardsburg Public Schools. They are coached by Andrew Dohm, who is a physics and math instructor at Southwestern Michigan College, and Nichole Dohm, who teaches science at Edwardsburg Middle School. 

FIRST Lego League teams feature up to 10 members from grades fourth through sixth and research a real-world problem and are challenged to develop a solution. They also must design, build and program a robot using Lego Mindstorms, then compete on a table-top playing field. This year’s theme was “city shaper,” where teams investigated big issues facing cities and towns like transportation, accessibility and even natural disasters. The team learned about adaptive reuse architecture and developed a plan for the vacant county courthouse in Cassopolis.   

Through the competition, the team learns to apply science, technology, engineering and math concepts, plus a big dose of imagination, to solve a problem, according to the coaches.  Along their journey, members develop critical thinking and team-building skills, basic STEM applications and even presentation skills, as they must present their solutions with a dash of creativity to judges. They also practice the program’s core values, which emphasize discovery, innovation, impact, inclusion, teamwork and fun, they added. 

For more information about the program or to learn how to start a team, visit firstinspires.org/robotics/fll.