Last year, there was only one Yukon team competing in FIRST Lego League.

In 2020, that number grew to six and on Saturday at F.H. Collins, the inaugural Whitehorse FIRST Lego League qualifying championship was held.

Five teams (the sixth couldn’t make it) were vying for a chance to go to the BC Provincial Championships Feb. 16. Two teams booked their tickets to Victoria, the Yukon All Sparks were the top team followed by the Faro Brick Breakers as reserve champion.

There are three components a team must complete in a FIRST Lego League competition: robot games, project and core values. All aspects are tasked to a theme and for this year it was City Shaper.

The projects the teams completed had to solve a problem with a building or a public space in their community. The All Sparks project was an intermediate playground improvement at École White Elementary School. The Faro Brick Breakers project revolved around improving Fisheye Lake.

Other projects included improving the library parking lot, cutting down emissions at drive-thrus and plastic composting.

In robot games, the teams design a robot to complete a series of missions. The board the participants used was laid out like a city blueprint.

Core values are where a team demonstrates teamwork, inclusion, innovation, discovery, impact and fun.

Leanne Watson has been instrumental in bringing FIRST Lego League to the Yukon. She said it is exciting to see Lego League grow from one team to six.

“It’s super exciting,” said Watson. “We are growing per capita compared to a lot of places right now. This is huge growth in one year. Look at the kids, they’re stoked.”

When Watson started FIRST Lego League in the Yukon one of her goals was to bring it to the communities. She said it was great to see Faro with a team, who just so happen to be the most northern Canadian team.

“Right now, they are the most northern team in Canada and they may be the most northern team period,” said Watson.

“This is a big deal. These kids are meeting after school and they have to come to Whitehorse for scrimmages and meetings.”

Watson said she doesn’t want to stop at just six teams.

“I’d like to see 10 next year,” said Watson. “I don’t really know if that will happen but my fingers are crossed. I’d like to see community groups reach out and consider starting a team. Ten is my goal and from there the sky is the limit.”

The Yukon qualifier, Watson said, resembles what the teams can expect when they go to BC Provincials. Set up in front of the bleachers was a table with two boards on it for the robot competition where the teams demonstrated the capabilities of their robot.

Each team had four turns to complete missions with their robot. The scores were not cumulative.

“At provincials, it’s like this but with 54 teams,” said Watson. “It’s much louder, much more going on and at different levels. Our kids are all rookies. You wouldn’t know it by looking at their projects and the points they are putting on the board.

“At a competition, you have kids that have been doing this for five years. They know it in their bones. Our kids are learning from scratch.”

Audrey Provan was on the first team from the Yukon to attend a BC Provincial Champion. She said this year it was great to have more teams to compete against.

“Some of the teams here are really good and their robots are super good,” said Provan. “It means there is less chance of us going to Victoria.”

Provan said having more teams in the territory means everyone can grow and learn together.

“We are learning from each other by looking at the other robots,” said Provan.

Cavan Went on the Faro Brick Breaks spoke about what inspired him and his teammates to get involved.

“In the summer we did a Lego camp,” said Went. “We thought it was really fun advanced Lego. We decided to try it out and it worked. We are having a lot of fun.”

Went said he and teammates were big Lego fans before getting involved in FIRST Lego League. He and his fellow Brick Breakers were also passionate about their project to help improve their community.

“We did our project on a lake that we like Fisheye Lake and it has a lot of problems with it,” said Went. “We brought it to the town and they said they’ll consider doing some of it.”

When Went spoke to the Star he said the team hoped to be one of the two teams going to Victoria. Mission accomplished. Went said the robot games are where the team’s strength lay.

After their four turns, the Faro Brick Breakers posted the highest score of 305.

Mayor Dan Curtis and Minister of Community Services John Streicker were put to work on Saturday, judging projects and core values.

Streicker and Curtis also helped out the referees with timing the robot games.

“This is super fun,” said Streicker. “These kids are doing an amazing job. It’s so cool to see how they are innovating around the challenges put in front of them. You can tell that the kids are totally enthused.”

Streicker said the projects were inspiring to him and his fellow ministers.

“We were saying if we were a team we would lose because the teams are so excellent,” said Streicker.

Receiving the Air North Rising Star Rookie Award, like third place, was the Brick Barians.