This weekend, they will compete in the state competition at WSU’s Nutter Center with a $20,000 award and a possible patent in the balance.
The five students are David Demuth of Butler Twp., Ian Mahaffey of Tipp City, Zach Marker of Clayton and Micaela and Jaren Hinten of Ludlow Falls.
Demuth is in eighth grade at Smith Middle School in Vandalia, while the others are all home-schooled. All are either 13 or 14 years old, although Micaela Hinten recently turned 15.
Several other area teams also will compete at the state, including from Oakwood Junior High School, Kettering’s Ascension School, Miamisburgh’s Bishop Leibold School, Botkins School, Beavercreek Neighborhood Group, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Home School Group, Tippecanoe STEAM Booster, Springboro Home School Group and a team from the Boonshoft Museum.
Competition not only involves each team’s main project, but a robot category as well.
Although the Ludlow Falls students, who calls themselves the Bony Bunch, do not live in the same neighborhood, they have known each other from the Christian Life Center Church on Little York Road in Butler Twp.
“Four years ago, I got a Lego NXT set, and liked it a lot,” Jaren Hinten said. “I knew some people who had a Lego team, and dad became a coach.”
The First Lego League is an international competition with For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, or FIRST. FIRST is a nonprofit organization that runs the competition with the Lego company.
Each year, the competition features a new challenge, with this year’s theme being, Body Forward, encouraging teams ages 9 to 14 to develop projects related to biomedical engineering.
The Bony Bunch researched a brittle bone condition, called Osteogenesis Imperfecta, developing a physical therapy regimen that have some local doctors enthused. Even if the Bony Bunch does not win the state competition, it may be able to attract seed money to develop its project further.
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