By Ainsley Hall, The Journal
MARTINSBURG, W.Va. — Berkeley County 4-H’s FIRST LEGO League (FLL) team won first place at the West Virginia FLL State Championships, earning an invitation to the World Championship in April. They are the first FLL team from West Virginia to be invited in the past five years.
FLL is a program that teaches kids how to design, build and program robots out of LEGOS. It is completely free for students to join. Teams then compete to see who can collect the most points by completing certain tasks. On Dec. 7, Berkeley County 4-H’s FLL teams traveled to Fairmont University to compete in the state championship. Not only did all the teams finish in the top 25%, one of their teams Lego Force won first place, earning the chance to compete in the World Championship in Houston, Texas from April 16-19.
Lego Force included Zachary Dugger and twins Chosen and Majesty Clarke. Dugger joined FLL three years ago when he decided to try something new. Meanwhile Chosen and Majesty joined two years ago because they were interested in learning about programming. Both their parents and grandfather have experience working with computers, so they wanted to learn more about coding. They became a team of three this year and have been working hard to improve.
