Moovers taking Lego talents to Germany

Back in February, after the team he coaches had won the state championship, Rhett Starr had them focusing on the national tournament.

His players, the Moovers, had something more on their mind, as well: An international competition after that in Europe. Starr told the kids plainly:

Don’t even think about it. The team does not have the money.

Starr was totally wrong. This week, his kids are at that international competition.

“None of us could afford to go,” Starr said Sunday. “Once we got the big grant, a lot of these problems went away.”

The Moovers are an all-girl, all-sixth-grade team from Woodlawn Middle School in the First Lego League, which promotes science and engineering by showing kids how those two fields can be fun. The fun comes by playing with Legos — the teams must build motorized robots out of the plastic bricks and program them to drive around a game board, completing a set number of tasks in the shortest time span possible.

Later this week, the crew will time their robot against 63 counterparts from Brazil, Israel, Canada, South Africa, Guatemala and other nations at a global-level competition in Mannheim, Germany.

The Moovers are finishing their third season of competition; in January, they won the FLL state tournament in Arlington Heights, qualifying them for a trip to Winter Haven, Fla., one month ago for nationals. They did not win that tournament, but did place first in one of the four judging categories: teamwork.

“It’s our enthusiasm,” said Laurie Haas, another coach/parent, of the group that arrives for competitions with spotted-cow manicures and pom-pons in their ponytails. “They’re willing to be silly and do cheers.”

Haas said she was not surprised that an all-female crew could communicate and pull together better than mostly or entirely boy teams in a field that is 85 percent male.

“I think that’s the girl part of it, the empathy,” she said.

Which manifests itself in the Moovers’ all-inclusive distribution of duties, she said: Every Moover must know every role.

On most FLL clubs, the kids figure out which individual is best for each of the variety of roles played during robotics and presentations, and thus each member is specialized into one job. For the Woodlawn team, though, every girl has to learn how to do every job, and the nine-member squad rotates competition times in sets of three.

“Boys are more task-oriented, whereas, with our team, we really want everybody to do everything,” Haas said. “Boys are too competitive, maybe.”

But the Moover parents became pretty aggressive themselves in late February, when the chance to go to Germany emerged: Months before the national competition, the group learned that their state title had already qualified them for a slot in an international tournament. The girls were giddy with excitement, Haas said — but the grown-ups had to have a serious meeting to discuss whether the trip could happen.

“We had to give a decision by Feb. 24,” leaving them with only days to think of funding, she said. “The parents knew it was the opportunity of a lifetime.

“In the world of sixth grade, anything’s possible, because the money’s on the tree in the back yard,” Haas added.

But in the world of adults, most family budgets were tight, and a variety of employment and vacation situations were serious considerations. In the end, though, five of the nine families found ways to make the trip happen.

It was not until after they made the commitment that the sponsorship money began to appear. The Moovers’ trip is now funded in part by the Tooling and Manufacturing Association and manufacturing giant Bosch.

“We’re pretty ecstatic,” Haas said of the companies’ “very large” contributions. “The fact that we’re an all-girl team was appealing to them.”

She and her daughter, Claire, will take part in the international meet, which takes place June 8-9. With the roster cut in half, she said their mandate for teaching every girl every role came in unexpectedly handy: adjustments will have to be made, but the five making the trip already had the basics nailed down.

The Moovers are the best in one of the nation’s most populous states, and the best in the nation at one particular category — but now they face the best in the world. Haas laughed off the idea of losing confidence on the international stage.