For Ibrahim Blake and fellow members of the Bovina Brigade robotics team, building a movable mechanical model is about more than showing workmanship and skill.
It’s about building a bridge of communication to children with developmental disabilities.
“I learned about how it’s not necessarily about how they’re different, it’s that they have trouble communicating,” the Bovina sixth-grader said. “It’s to build learning tools.”
The Brigade was one of two teams of students in the Vicksburg Warren School District to win trophies in the 2014 FIRST LEGO League Mississippi championship Saturday at the Vicksburg Convention Center. Thirty teams of about five to 10 students each from across the state showcased their respective autonomous robots after winning various qualifying rounds earlier this year. Judges awarded the team the presentation award, one of three project-specific honors given out among 16 awards overall for grades 4-8. A separate set of honors was given out to eight teams of students in K-3 for science fair-styled projects.
The Bowmar Builders, one of eight local teams in the robotics competition, took home a mechanical design award for designing a robot incorporating sensors.

“It’s everyone’s first time,” volunteer coach Shelly Tingle said of the Bowmar contingent’s effort. “In August, the kids didn’t know how to build and program a robot. In just four months, they learned how to do it.”
After three rounds of presentations lasting about 2 ½ minutes each, judges evaluated the teams on a variety of skillsets, from the design of the robots to how well the students worked together with each other in performing a specific task.
The first place Champions Award, signifying the overall winner of the older grades competition, went to Recharged, a team of home-schooled students from Pearl. The second place Champions Award went to Della Dolphins, from Della Davidson Elementary in Oxford.
Each champion has a chance to be selected from a lottery of 108 teams from 80 nations to compete in April at the world LEGO League festival in St. Louis, Mississippi’s FIRST LEGO League representative Eddie Melton said.
“This year’s theme was about how people learn best to solve real-world problems,” Melton said. “Whether it’s through sight or sound, if that’s the way their mindset works, then do it.”
Each team’s robot took about eight to 12 weeks to construct, Melton said.
Vicksburg Warren’s teams dominated the K-3 competition, winning seven of the eight awards there. Winners included two teams named Blockheads, Edwards-Stewart, Bovina Bots, Bulldogs and Short Circuit. An eighth winner, Rebel Robots, was from Oxford.

“We had a lot of kids who like to play soccer, so ours made a soccer field with a motorized model on it,” Blockheads volunteer Jason McKenna said. The two teams were separated by gender and were from South Park, Beechwood and St. Francis Xavier elementary schools.
It was the state competition’s first trip to Vicksburg after several years in Hattiesburg, and is set to return to the River City next year — a coup Melton, an engineer in the environmental lab at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, credits ERDC’S continued support, which has provided funding, work space and materials to Team 456 Siege Robotics in Vicksburg during the local team’s 15-year run.
“Because of ERDC, we get a lot of volunteers to come out,” Melton said.
A primary goal of LEGO events nationwide is to encourage elementary school students to pursue careers in math and science — and to celebrate students’ achievement along the way, event judge Chuck Dickerson said.
“It’s really about the kids,” Dickerson said.