Greenville LEGO League team back in the spotlight
Local students are making a difference through engineering
Argent Agents, a Greenville FIRST LEGO League team, is back to the world championship for the second year in a row. “They won the state championship again this year,” Chris Arzt, the team’s coach and a parent of two of the competitors, said. “Last year when they won, they weren’t at all expecting it. After they went to the World Championship last year, they got home and said, ‘we’re going to do it again next year.’ So, they committed to working really hard. I was very impressed with them. There’s an initial qualifier tournament, there’s a regional tournament, and then if you do well enough in that, you go to the state championships, and they did all that. And then they won the state championship.”
Next up, the team competes in the FIRST LEGO League Challenge World Championships in Houston, Texas, starting April 16. The competition includes the top 110 teams – out of about 30,000 – from around the world. It teaches young people how to think like engineers and solve problems as a team.
Argent Agents includes six Greenville students, five of whom are current students at CTC/Sterling School and one who graduated from the program last year: Lily Arzt, Nicky Arzt, Benjamin Frick, Jackson Champion-Wescott, Jackson Haughton, and Henry Quackenbush.
Innovation Project to Benefit Parkinson’s Patients
As part of the challenge this year, the team created an innovation project that is designed to make it easier for people with Parkinson’s Disease or essential tremors to paint. They developed three tools that help to counteract tremors and make it easier for people to use a paintbrush, pencil, or marker. And they are using their success to help raise money for the American Parkinson Disease Association.
Arzt said the community has rallied around to help the team. Among their supporters, Arzt credits Brent Click, owner of Hyper Formance machine shop, with going out of his way to be a resource for the students. “He has been really wonderful in letting them come over and helping them deal with stuff,” Arzt said. “They couldn’t have built a lot of this without access to him and his help and his tools.”
Supporting a Good Cause
To support the team’s fundraiser for the American Parkinson Disease Association (APDA), visit apdaparkinson.donordrive.com/campaign/argent. To find out more about joining FIRST LEGO League and to follow the team’s success, visit firstsouthcarolina.org.
