ROYAL CITY — The Oceanic Outlaws think fast. 

The robotics team from Royal Middle School, representing Washington state, took first place at the national First Lego League Western Edge national competition May 30-June 1 in a special “On the Spot” challenge. 

“It was a brand-new board with brand-new missions on it that they’ve never seen before for their robot to complete,” said their coach, RMS science teacher Theresa Piper. “They get to work as a new alliance (with two other teams) and they have to take their robots and rebuild them, come up with attachments and pieces to make their robot complete these tasks that they just were introduced to. They only have a few hours to work together as a brand-new team.” 

To add a layer of difficulty, there were only three boards available for at least 50 teams to work on, meaning teams had to take turns working for short periods of time, Piper said. 

“You've got about 500 kids that are sharing these three boards,” she said. “Lots of lessons in sharing and patience.” 

A board, she explained, is a large plywood sheet with a map marked out on it. Students program their robots to perform specified tasks at various points around the board and are scored on how precisely the robots accomplish them. 

The overall rankings for the tournament weren’t available at press time, according to the First Lego League’s website. The two teams that won the On the Spot challenge with the Oceanic Outlaws were the Electric Eagles from Colorado Springs, Colorado and the Saline Robohive from Saline, Mich. Teams came from 50 states and from around the world. The number of teams in this year’s competition wasn’t available but last year’s had 85 teams entered, according to First Lego League’s website. 

The Oceanic Outlaws qualified for the national competition after taking the Champion Finalist award at the state-level competition in Spokane in January. The theme for the year was “Submerged” and teams had to find solutions to underwater problems. Royal has sent individual students to nationals before, Piper told the Columbia Basin Herald in January, but this is the first time a team from RMS has qualified. 

Robotics plays a large role in Royal schools, said Royal Middle School Principal Jerred Copenhaver. 

“It gives an outlet for kids who don’t do sports,” Copenhaver said. “It’s been a big success. They started in elementary and intermediate (school) and by the time they get to us they’re pretty well trained.” 

The trip involved a lot of firsts for the students, Piper said. For some of them, it was their first time seeing the ocean. 

“They dove in clothes and all,” she said. “And swam and built sand castles and buried each other and did all those fun things.” 

For some students, it was also their first flying experience, she said, which prompted some lessons about what to say and not to say to TSA agents. 

The First Lego League isn’t limited to schools; private organizations also send teams, Piper said. And unlike most school competitions, the teams aren’t categorized by either age or school size.  

“We had people traveling from across the world, and the international teams, they go up to age 16,” she said. “We've got 14 at the oldest, so we've got much older kids we're competing against. We've got private schools and private groups. We've got kids who have engineers for parents that are coaching. So any kind of thing you can imagine is what we're really going against.” 

The students learn more than just how to make machinery obey them, Piper said. 

“A lot of it is human error, and being nervous, and not aligning your robot perfectly,” she said. “Because on the practice run, everything ran almost perfect, but then when you go to do your real competition run, we ran into a few whoopsies. It teaches the kids a lot about how to face adversity, or when things go wrong, how do we respond? Another big part of First Lego League is teaching kids mistakes are okay, and how we manage ourselves when mistakes are happening.” 

Piper’s dedication has a lot to do with the RMS team’s success, Copenhaver said. 

“Without her, none of this happens at the middle school,” he said. “She puts her heart and soul into this.” 

    A very triumphant Lilly Piper, left, and Eva Villa show off their Oceanic Outlaws T-shirts at the Western Edge Open robotics competition.
  

    The Royal Middle School Oceanic Outlaws display their trophy for the On the Spot challenge. Back, from left: Martin Alcala, Archer Guyton, Jose Villanueva. Middle: Lilly Piper, Eva Villa, Manny Luis-Reyes. Front: Maria Gallegos, Caleb Freeman.