The FIRST® LEGO® League Challenge tournament, hosted by London Gatwick at its renowned STEM Centre, took place on Thursday 13 February. An impressive fifteen teams of students, aged 9 to 16, from schools across the South East, competed in the SUBMERGED℠ challenge, all vying for the prestigious title of Regional Champions. Durrington High School were the only team in Worthing to have made it this far and our team did fantastically well on the day. 

This year’s theme, SUBMERGED℠, challenges students to explore the mysteries and complexities of the underwater world, including ocean exploration, marine conservation, underwater technology and aquatic ecosystems. It encourages them to think about how robotics and engineering can aid in exploring and protecting the oceans while solving real-world problems, which they had to incorporate into their Innovation Project presentations on the day. The students had been working for many weeks in the computing code club after school preparing for the missions. They built Lego robots and had prepared and practiced their presentation. 

The Durrington team found their first compete on the competition mat hard, and the robot and the coding let them down, but they did not give up and came back really strong in the second round. Having had time to work on their code and use the practice mat they scored really high on their second attempt. They worked well as a team for their presentation and overcame all the tricky questions really well. 

Once again, the results were extremely close, and the title of Sussex Regional Tournament Champions was awarded to Westminster School B. The team received their trophy from the Apprentice Development Lead at London Gatwick Airport and will now represent their school and Sussex at the FIRST® LEGO® League SUBMERGED UK National Final in Harrogate later this year.

There were also accolades for:

• Robot Performance Award – Westminster School B
• Innovation Project Award – Reigate St Mary’s Preparatory School
• Core Values Award – The Hawthorns School
• Robot Design Award – Uckfield Community Technology College B
• Gatwick Resilience Award – Durrington High School
• Coach/Mentor Award – Ifield Community College
• Build Competition Award – Uckfield Community Technology College A

The Durrington team members were: Tom Karalus, Ethan Hardy, Jake Whitehouse, Samuel Moktan, Alexander Wigmore, Josh Curd, Harrison Carter, Rose Cornwall, Dylan Cooper, Theo Birri, Erin Spicer and Hayden Hollingsworth, coached by Mr Scott.

FIRST® LEGO® League Challenge is a global competition for young people aged 9 to 16, organised in the UK by the Institution of Engineering and Technology.