Clairemont Team to Compete in Championship!

At the Poway Qualifying Tournament

We are Team Level Up and we are competing in the 2013 First Lego League (FLL) Competition We are all kids that live in Clairemont.

In FLL, teams from around the world compete in designing and programming LEGO robots to do special missions on a table. Along the process of building our robots, each team must do a project relating to the theme of the competition. This year's theme is about natural disasters. We have chosen to do our project on wildfires in Clairemont.

Doing research in Tecolote Canyon

We visited multiple professionals, such as firefighters and park rangers. They told us how important it is that people with houses on the rim of Tecolote Canyon should have 100 feet of defensible space. Defensible space is where they have cleared and thinned brush. The city will eventually do it, but it can take up to 3 years. If homeowners want to do it themselves, it can cost them at least $500 and it is very complicated to do correctly. Consequently, people don’t want to do it, which will raise the risk of fire!

Our solution is that the city should reimburse you $500 if a ranger says your brush is cleared properly. By reimbursing people $500, the city could save a lot of money and time, for it costs so much more for the city if property is damaged during a wildfire, and it would cost a lot to pay the firefighters. People might die, too. We think it is a creative idea and the city should adopt our solution. We are sending a letter to the city council to propose this idea. We are calling our solution Bucks for Brush.


We went to the qualifying tournament at Poway High School this month. We presented our Bucks for Brush idea to judges and we competed with our robot against fifteen other teams. We did great! We are one of the four teams that were selected at that tournament to compete at the FLL Southern California Championship at LEGOLAND on Dec. 8, 2013.

Our team practices in a garage in Clairemont. Our ages are 10, 10, 11, 12, and 12. One of us goes to Longfellow Spanish Immersion K-8, another goes to Innovation Middle, and the last three go to Hawthorne Elementary. On the team, there are 2 people named Schuyler and they are boy and girl. Kellen and the 10 year old Schuyler are brother and sister. Kellen is the only one who has been on an FLL team before. Our robot is a lego mindstorm and is named The Clairemontster!

Team Level Up (L-R Lina R., Schuyler F., Shawn R., Kellen S., Schuyler S.)

Meet the members of team Level Up:

• Kellen S.: I am involved in FLL because I love robots and I love going out there and competing against other teams.
• Schuyler S.: I joined the FLL team because I saw my brother be on a team and I wanted to join in on the fun!
• Shawn R.: I joined the FLL team because I thought I would benefit from it in countless ways. So far I have!
• Lina R.: I joined the FLL team because it sounded like so much fun and I love everything it involves!
• Schuyler F.: I wanted to join because I wanted to build robots with my friends!

Thank you,

Team Level Up and our coach Kent Smith (kent.m.smith@gmail.com)