OSHKOSH (NBC 26) — Oshkosh North High School hosted the area's first LEGO League Regional Tournament, bringing together more than 100 young students from across Wisconsin to showcase their robotics skills and creativity.
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The tournament featured months of research, teamwork and problem-solving as students put their robots and ideas to the test in competitive challenges.
"Centers around building a robot for a game each year… We compete globally so we've competed against teams from Israel, China," said Jacob Branson, a sophomore from Oshkosh who serves as team lead.
Branson has been building robots with LEGOs for years and leads a student robotics program called WAVE, which helped host the tournament.
"You go to competitions, it's like a sporting event, a lot of them end up in stadiums," Branson said.
Amy Hardy, tournament director and one of the coaches, helped bring the sport to Winnebago County.
"Every team comes up with a different robot and as you can see if you walk around all the robots look completely different," Hardy said.
Each team gets two and a half minutes to have their robot complete as many tasks as it can. The robots are built and programmed entirely by student teams using LEGO bricks available at retail stores.
"The games are exciting, fast paced," Branson said.
Top-scoring teams will advance to the Wisconsin FLL Sectional Tournament in Mukwonago next month, continuing their competitive journey in the global robotics competition.
