Tyler Grose, left, reacts during the Athens Robot Team's appearance at the FIRST Lego League regional qualifier tournament at Columbia High School. He is joined by teammates Jordan Cullison, James Leonard, Caroline Cullison, Ella Marlowe and Hannah Turner. The team won top honors during the qualifier Dec. 1 and will compete in the state competition in March.

The Athens Robot Team reigned supreme at the FIRST Lego League Qualifier Tournament Dec. 1 at Columbia High School in Huntsville, winning first place in the robot performance division.

The six-member team also won the overall Champions Award, which automatically qualifies them to compete in the Alabama FLL Championship in March.

Consisting of students from Athens Middle and Athens Intermediate schools, the team includes fifth-grade student Caroline Cullison and seventh-graders Ella Marlowe, Jordan Cullison, Tyler Grose, James Leonard and Hannah Turner.

At this year’s qualifier, the group had to build robots around the theme “Into Orbit,” which challenged teams to design a Lego world centered on space travel. Using a programmable robot, the team raced to deliver satellites to designated orbits and rescue stranded astronauts.

For the accompanying research project, the team put their heads together to tackle an existing problem that affects humans in space. To that end, the Athens Robot Team consulted with scientists at NASA in Huntsville, the Marshall Space Flight Center and NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia to develop an idea to combat space radiation.

“The Athens Robot Team worked really hard to prepare for the qualifier,” said Andy Grose, one of the team’s coaches. “They were ready to go on Saturday morning when the qualifier started.”

Cynthia Leonard also served as a team coach.

At the start of the day, the team shared their ideas about space radiation, demonstrated their robot and completed a team exercise in front of a panel of judges. Later, during performance rounds, the team’s robot, ART, was nearly flawless in racking up the highest score of the day with 164 points.

“The team was thrilled with their performance and happy to see ART sitting at the top of the scoreboard,” Grose said.