By Cooperative Extension Staff

The VC Silver Bricks FIRST Lego League 4-H club began in the Fall of 2016 under the guidance of FLL Coach and 4-H leader Nicole Frens.

Storey County youth Connor Brigger, Gage Crudo, Xander Frens, Dakota Pittsley, Keith Rasmussen, Aiden Troska and Karl Valdez make up the team who follow a set of core values as they work to come up with solutions to challenges issued through FLL.

Coach and leader Frens found her first challenge was locating donors to help with initial costs for the materials the team needed to create the game field and build the robots in order to move on to competition.

Thanks to the generosity of Nevada Energy, Walmart, Storey County Jeep Posse, The Comstock Ladies, and Ascension Engineering, the club was able to purchase the supplies and build their official game table to begin working on the FIRST Lego League challenges.

“If you want to be an engineer, or you like robotics, or just like Legos, FLL is great! I’d call it a
10 on a 10 point scale!” – Xander

Team coach, Nicole Frens, explains working on core values and team building exercises are an important part of each meeting. Each step is an exploration for team members on how they can find the next solution to resolve the challenges that are issued.

Remembering to include every team members’ ideas and build on them is important to the goals they have in advancing the designs of their Lego Mindstorm robots in order to perform the challenge tasks. To date the club has enthusiastically participated in four competitions and proposed a series of much needed signage to alert drivers to the ever present wild horse bands that continually cross Storey County roads. Their project presentation, which won first place at the competition, was presented to Virginia Range Wildlife Protection Association, the local wild horse protection group, as well as the County Commissioners.

This year the club would like to add more coaches and 4-H leaders to their membership in order to begin signing up the waiting list of students who want to become involved in this exciting new project area. To that end, outreaches are planned for Storey County youth and their parents within the next few months. For more information or to donate contact University of Nevada Cooperative Extension office for Carson City/ Storey County 775-887-2252.