Paternal pride

For the past 4 months, I have been helping to coach a group of 9- and 10-year-old elementary school girls competing in the First Lego League. The FLL is an international competition in which 9-14 year-old kids build robots out of Lego Mindstorms kits to solve a series of missions.

Last month, our girls finished 5th out of 56 teams at their local qualifying tournament (which I’m told is the largest in the US). A week from today they will be competing in the Northern California championship.

I rarely have much use for YouTube, but below is the YouTube video of the girls’ Dec. 8 three competition runs, with the second delivering 310 of 400 possible points. (In case you’re curious, my daughter is the only blond on the team.) After our practice Friday, we are shooting for 380 points at the championship.