Lego League Coaching

Welcome to Lego League Coaching! I put this site together to help first time Lego League coaches to learn the ins and outs of coaching that I had to learn on my own. The site is divided up into sections related to each of the judging criteria. Here is a map of various posts to [...]

Minnesota held its first regional (qualifier) tournament this weekend. The state divides our kids up into two divisions: Division 1 (4-6 grade) and Division 2 (7 & 8 grade). We had 16 teams in Division 1 and 9 teams in Division 2. The scores for this early regional were about what I expected. I would [...]

Don’t forget that you’ll probably want to buy t-shirts for your team for the competition. It’s a cool “prize” for being part of the team. The kids really enjoy designing their own shirt and seeing it come to life. Over the last few years, I’ve used Cafepress for my shirts, but their web site and [...]

I had the pleasure of being a referee at one of the Minnesota regional tournaments today. I had a blast! The best part was that my daughter came along and was my assistant for the day. They let her wear a referee shirt and she helped me reset the board after each run. It was [...]

The FIRST Lego League competition season is in full force the next few weekends. I would like to take this opportunity to wish all Lego League teams, rookie or not, good luck in their regional/qualifying tournaments. Minnesota has 3 tournaments this weekend and 5 next weekend. I’ll be reffing at one of the tournaments next [...]

Part of the reason for all the competition discussion the past few weeks is that my team got an early draw this year. Our competition was yesterday. Most of the other regional competitions in the state are in the first and second weekend of December. I am happy to report that my team did very [...]

Some final thoughts about preparing for your competition: Here in Minnesota, our competitions go for the better part of the day. We are expected to be there from 8am to 5pm. It ends up being a long, exhausting day, but very fun for the kids, and hopefully for you, too. Our competitions are divided into [...]

The last judging category is in Teamwork. As I mentioned before, in Minnesota’s regional tournaments, the Project and Teamwork judges are in the same room and take turns asking questions. I would be interested to hear if other tournaments are the same way. As with the other judging categories, the rubrics from FIRST are in [...]

For the Project judging, your team will walk in and set up for their presentation. When all has settled down, the judge will tell the team to start whenever they are ready and start the timer. They are given 5 minutes to do their presentation. Depending on the judge and the tournament, some judges will [...]

When you get to technical judging, there will be a Game table set up just like at the performance runs. There are generally two judges: one to judge your robot design, and one to judge your programs. Your team will be asked to run their missions and describe what is happening with their robot. They [...]