Siblings from Royston, who teamed up with their friends in Cambridge to take on a junior engineers’ challenge, have been crowned champions of the national competition.
Meridian student Oscar Berry, 15, his sister Iona, and a second set of siblings, Albert and Quim 15, Joan 13, and 11-year-old Lluis Borrell found out their group – B6 Berrellium – beat 47 other teams to win the IET’s UK & Ireland FIRST LEGO League competition final in Bristol last week.
They now have a place at the World Festival in America.
Roysia Middle School pupil Iona, 12, said: “It was a brilliant event and we really enjoyed it.
“We were looking forward to the chance to meet the other teams and see if all our hard work would pay off. It was fantastic to win the Robot knockout competition – and to get the overall champions’ award showed our project, core values and technical presentations were all good too.
“It’s going to be awesome to represent the UK and Ireland and compete with more than a hundred other teams in America. We can’t wait!”
The Berry siblings’ mum Kate, said: “When I found out they won, I couldn’t actually believe it.
“They hadn’t won up until that point, and I was thinking ‘but they’re good, they should have something’ and they did. So it was a bit of a shock!
“They started work before the Summer holidays’ last year, doing their LEGO missions from home.
“They are all very practical and logical. Iona is good with social media and writing, Oscar and the older boys are much more into programming.
The event in Bristol, hosted by CBBC presenter Fran Scott, was the competition’s largest ever final with nearly 500 young people attending who were all keen to demonstrate their skills in robotics, computer programming, teamwork, research, problem solving and communication.
The group are now hoping to raise £12,000 to go to St Louis in Missouri to compete in the World Festival.
Joan Borrell said: “It was an amazing experience. This event has given us the opportunity to meet amazing teams.
“All the people were very nice and welcoming. I really liked it and now we have a new opportunity, going to the USA!
“I would definitely encourage other children to get involved in FIRST LEGO League. It is worth it!”
IET President Jeremy Watson CBE said: “FIRST LEGO League is not just a robotics competition, it is a unique educational opportunity for young people to pursue their ideas and collaborate with businesses and organisations from the world outside school as they develop innovative solutions to problems they have identified in real world issues.”
To help with the fundraising effort go to www.b6lego.co.uk.
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