MORT Hosts the 2025 FIRST LEGO League Qualifier: UNEARTHED

On November 22nd, The 2025 First Lego League (FLL) qualifier was held at Mount Olive High School by MORT , where 31 teams competed for various awards including spots to compete in the FLL Championships. 

FIRST LEGO League (FLL) is a global robotics competition where students (usually ages 6-13), design, build, and program a LEGO robot to complete missions on a themed game board. 

This year the game is titled “UNEARTHED”, with a map based off of all things that are related to archeology. These teams had a common goal; to build and program their LEGO robot to complete the tasks that surrounded delivering artifacts to a central location. Aside from just the game, they have to dig deep and look into archeological problems. They do research and come up with a way to go about changing those real-world issues by connecting them to the theme each year and then present an innovative solution to the judges. 

Statewide teams compete at the FLL Qualifier held at Mount Olive High School.

The event doors opened at 8am, allowing teams to warm up from the cold, get checked in, and receive their informational packet. Once they were all checked in, our MORT volunteers took each team to their designated pit locations. After a short period of time to allow the teams time to go over their presentations, our volunteers took the teams to the judging rooms when their judging time came. Simultaneously, utilizing a sign up procedure, we had practice tables running for the teams that were not in judging. After our lunch break, at 1:20, our MORT volunteers were sent off to bring their teams back to the tables for match queuing. We had six game tables set up to maximize how many teams could compete at the same time. Once all of the matches were completed, the scores were tallied and our closing ceremony was set to begin. In total we had 14 teams that received awards. 

Some of the awards that were handed out were: the Robot Performance Award received by team 52319 - Electric Eagles, the Breakthrough Award received by team 66893 - FireFoxes, the Robot Design Award received by team 55895 - Lightning Botz, and the Coach/Mentor Award received by team 66893 - FireFoxes. 

The Overall Champion’s Award ,which recognizes the team who are the best all-around team that excelled in the Game, Project, Robot Design, and Core Values, was received by team 70567 - Cybermasons.

Every year, teams statewide attend these competitions, 8 of them being from right in Mount Olive. Support, both local and statewide, have come to cheer on the younger generations that are intrigued by STEM, and have been extremely important for them to be involved and thinking about their communities by truly getting intrigued with solving real-world issues. 

On December 13th and 14th we will be hosting the FIRST LEGO League Championships. The first day, all the teams come in and stand before official FIRST judges to present each of their solutions. The second day will be filled with

field time, where teams will be competing in qualifying matches and eventually get to the finals. At the end of the second day, the winners will be announced along with the teams who will be the recipients of awards. 

Come support and watch these young minds compete and have a great time!