In the last blog I wrote, I mentioned how the local tournament which happened on May 6th and 7th, 2023 went for our Science and Technology high school team, Wanderlust. In the tournament, we got third place and got the chance to go to the national tournament, where 41 teams from all around Turkey attended. You can read the details from my previous blog, at this link: https://www.todaythe50th.com/post/wanderlust-s-journey-the-path-to-victory
So, on the 10th of June, Saturday, the national First Lego League tournament took place in Izmir Fair Area, Gaziemir. And I am thrilled to tell you all about it!
Our team arrived at school at 7.00 am. We packed our things and carried them to the bus. We set off at 7.30 am. And when we arrived in the tournament area, the fun officially started!
A team photo with our coaches and school principal, Dr. Aylin Gil.
This year’s team was “Energize” and all teams needed to prepare a project in order to introduce it to the audience and the jury in the tournament. There was a huge variety of projects which just amazed me! Our project was a system that automatically cleaned the dirt that decreased the efficiency of the solar panels by %30. You can see the prototypes in these images:
Our prototypes
When we were unpacking our stuff, other teams had already started dancing, which was also really interesting, considering it was only 8.00 am and we hadn’t even woken up properly, and we were still tired of the preparations we had done in order to be fully ready for the tournament.
We prepared our table to introduce our team to the visitors. And we wished good luck to all the other teams before the matches and the jury sessions started.
Some photos of me in the tournament, I had SO MANY badges! (as you can clearly see 😊)
We spent our day introducing projects, practicing robots, dancing, chatting with other teams, chatting with each other, dancing with other teams, and so on. We really had a fun time at the tournament. And, a little fun fact, some teams had mascots. We had one too but it was an inflatable dragon, some teams had actual living people who were dressed up as animals for mascots, which I found really entertaining. Here are some photos of mascots:
Some mascots
We had fun all day and then went to the award ceremony. People who attended an FLL event know that the most stressful part of the whole event is generally the award ceremony. Jury session is also stressful and some people might find it even more stressful but I think I had more stressed in the award ceremony. Because when you work hard on something, you expect it to pay off, and we worked extremely hard as a team, so we were really thrilled to learn about the awards and the teams that won them.
And we won 1st place in the “Innovative Project” category out of all 41 teams that attended. We were really glad to win such an important award and make everyone who believed in us on this journey proud.
As I said in the previous blog, we worked insanely hard during the tournament but every single thing we did, we did with teamwork, and I think that was the key to our success.
Our team members taking photos with the award
Here is a video of our award being announced:
Credits to:
Our group members and Mentours: Duru Özdemir, Duru Karakuş, Atınç Alp Bulut, Jülide Ezel Kavalcı, Efe Demir Şahin, Mert Bayram, Koray Kantar, Onur Tatar, Ali Efe Ezenoğlu, Öykü Başaran, Oya Tezcoşkun & Can Kitiş
Coaches: Ahmet Özgür & Orçun Aksade