Voorhees team captures LEGO League win at Rowan

The team Lucky Bananas from Voorhees, coached by Matthew Reischer, took home the top prize when Rowan University hosted the Southern New Jersey First LEGO League (FFL) Championship on Saturday, March 3, on the Glassboro campus. The winners earned the opportunity to compete in the First LEGO League national competition in Detroit April 25 to 28.

FLL is a national program designed to introduce younger students to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines while solving real-world problems. This year’s theme was hydrodynamics, and students explored engineering concepts and practices to protect the world’s most precious liquid asset -- water.

The top 12 qualifying teams from across the South Jersey region researched challenges associated with hydrodynamics, identifying a problem within the human water cycle and presenting their solutions to improve this problem. 

The signature event of the championship was the robot competition, with teams racing their robots through a course of pumps, piping, faucets and water treatment equipment. The teams also displayed a gallery of the research posters in Rowan’s Student Center Ballroom. Judges evaluated each team on their research project, core values and robot design.

Greg Hollows of Edmund Optics LLC (the event corporate sponsor), gave the keynote speech at the event, which was coordinated by the Rowan STEM Center.