In the FIRST LEGO League (FLL), the 80 teams who won awards at the qualifying borough tournaments were invited to participate in a citywide championship for the Food Factor Challenge. Each team researched an innovative solution to a current problem in the food industry and designed and built a robot to accomplish designated tasks in a specific amount of time. The two Dalton teams who qualified last January, once again brought home prestigious awards for their hard work and impressive performances. The rookie fifth and sixth graders on the blue team, RoboRodeo, took third place in Programming, and the experienced sixth and seventh graders from the silver team, Alien Pi, recorded the highest score in the robot game to win first place for Robot Performance. This event marked the end of another exciting FLL season, and is a much deserved reward for seven months of dedicated effort by the team members.

In the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC), teams design, construct, and program a robot to play a game that is a combination of racquetball, bowling, and jenga. Dalton fielded two of the eighty teams -- a high school robotics team, Atomic Theory, and an eighth grade team, Robogamers -- both of whom took home impressive awards at the event. The Robogamers surprised many and won their division, receiving the Finalist Alliance Captain award despite this being their first appearance at FTC. Part of a year long high school course on robotics in the computer science department, Atomic Theory independently managed the entire seven month project, making it into the division finals and receiving a Semi-Finalist Alliance award.

Congratulations to all four teams for a tremendous accomplishment. Thank you to the coaches, mentors, teachers, parents and event volunteers who supported them this year.