Nearly 400 students representing more than 50 teams from two states competed for a trip to the FIRST Lego League World Festival in St. Louis at the league’s state championships on Saturday.

Only one team, Naturally Disastrous, from Hampstead Academy, was able to advance past the state championships, leaving Nick Ford, an 11-year-old team member, in a state of shock.

“My stomach is ripping itself apart,” Nick said as he held his team’s first-place trophy.

The state championships returned to Nashua for the first time in several years. The event was held at Nashua High School South, with employees of BAE Systems acting as judges.

Teams from Vermont were also invited to compete for a chance at championship glory.

“All my son thinks about is Legos,” said Randy Brown, coach of the Middlesex, Vt.-based team named Floodtastic. “But for me, it’s all about teamwork and the difficulties of working together when things aren’t going right.”

Teams were judged on categories ranging from the strength of their mechanical design to sportsmanship and creativity.

Brown, who is also a teacher, said his daughter is in her third year of FIRST Lego League competition, and “took a little coaxing” before signing up for another year.

“The kids are under a lot of pressure here,” Brown said. “Sometimes the parents are the hardest part, and the right mix of parents can be challenging.”

James Liang, 12, of Nashua, needed no coaxing before signing up for a second year with his team at the Academy for Science and Design in Nashua.

“It’s good experience that might be helpful in the future,” James said. “We might be able to get an engineering job, and you learn a lot of interesting stuff.”

James said he has used his opportunities as a FIRST Lego League competitor to “build up teamwork skills” and doesn’t worry too much about the final score – just whether he had a good time.

“I guess we did pretty good, but I can’t be that confident,” James said. “But we tried our best and we had fun, and that’s most important.”

Teams were required to complete certain missions with their robot and were given scores by judges. The missions, which take place on an obstacle course, include knocking down a stack of blocks and using a robot to lift a Lego house.

Out of 17 available missions, teams were able to select which ones they would pursue.

As teams competed at Saturday’s tournament, closed-circuit cameras broadcast video of the competition over a massive screen to an auditorium filled with nearly a thousand onlookers.

The state championships also brought many former competitors from the Nashua area to work as event volunteers.

Nick Serpa, a 25-year-old engineer from Nashua, works for Ferrite Microwaves and uses his free time to act as a robotics mentor at Nashua South.

Serpa talked about the significance of getting kids interested in robotics early.

“This is a steppingstone to get them into bigger robotics programs at the high school level,” Serpa said.

Ruthreajeevi Govindaraj, 14, a student at Nashua High North, is an example of one of those students who followed robotics beyond his middle school years. He now competes with his high school’s FIRST Lego League team, Tough Techs.

Ruthreajeevi, who mentors a robotics team at Birch Hill Elementary in Nashua, is also from a family in which robotics has become a tradition. He hopes to become an engineer after high school.

“My sister is on the team” that he mentors, Ruthreajeevi said. “I wanted to support her, and I love seeing the look on the faces of the kids when they finally get it.”

Bradford Randall can be reached
at 594-6557 or brandall@nashua
telegraph.com. Also, follow Randall on Twitter (@telegraph_bradr).