Louisiana State FIRST® LEGO® League Challenge Inspires Young Innovators

On Sunday, March 1, 2026, New Orleans hosted the Louisiana FIRST® LEGO® League (FLL) Challenge State Championship at Jesuit High School, bringing together advancing middle school teams from across the state to compete, present their research projects, and
celebrate STEM learning. The event, which had been rescheduled from an earlier February date because of anticipated hazardous driving conditions, served as the culminating tournament for the 2025–26 FLL season in Louisiana. Tulane, through the Associate Dean for Community Engagement and Academic Partnerships, Michelle Sanchez, and retired Assistant Dean and alumna, Annette Oertling, houses and runs the Louisiana FIRST LEGO League affiliate, providing the organizational, logistical, and outreach backbone for the program in the state.

As Dr. Sanchez states, "For over two decades, the Center for K-12 STEM Education has empowered young minds through the FLL LA State Championship, inspiring elementary and middle school students to build the skills of tomorrow—coding, engineering, research and teamwork—while shaping the future innovators of the 21st century. Each year, this impactful program reaches over 500 students across the state, fostering curiosity, creativity, and a passion for STEM."

The 2025–26 season’s theme centered on archaeology and discoveries under the season title “UNEARTHED” (FIRST® AGE™ presented by Qualcomm), encouraging teams to dig into history, artifacts, and how discoveries from the past inform our future. In the FLL Challenge, teams combine research, engineering design, programming, and teamwork to solve a real-world problem related to the theme while building and running a LEGO robot through a set of missions on a standardized game table. Louisiana’s affiliate materials and season pages describe resources and guidance for coaches and teams to prepare for these multi-part evaluations.

As at other FLL Challenge events, teams were evaluated across three main areas: the Innovation Project (research and solution presentation), the Robot Game (performance of missions during timed runs), and Core Values (teamwork and professionalism). Judging sessions are handled by trained volunteers and are private to allow teams to present in a focused environment; results and awards were announced at the close of the day. The state-level tournament also provides practice tables and schedule slots so teams can warm up and refine robot runs between judging sessions.

Events like the LA State FLL Challenge create a hands-on environment where middle school students aged roughly 9 to14 practice engineering design, computational thinking, research communication, and collaboration under real deadlines; skills that transfer directly to classroom success and future careers. The season’s archaeology-inspired challenge gave teams a creative lens to explore how past innovations and artifacts inform contemporary problem-solving, while the competitive-but-friendly tournament setting encouraged resilience and iterative improvement. The Louisiana State Championship is the next step for teams that earned advancement from sanctioned qualifying tournaments around the state. The championship is structured to host up to 60 advancing teams- a cap set by the affiliate- each bringing a robot built and programmed to complete missions inspired by the season’s theme.

The Champion’s Award Winner was Team 57193, The Spartans, from Caldwell Parish Junior High School in Columbia, LA. The two Champion’s Award finalists were Team 67814, Geauxbots, a community team from Prairieville, LA and Team 56065, Bluejay Bots, from Oak
Grove Primary, also from Prairieville, LA. All three teams will be attending national tournaments. Team 57193 will be attending the FLL World Festival, held in Houston, TX, on April 29-May 2, Team 67814 will be attending the FLL Western Edge Invitational on May 29-31 in Long Beach CA, and Team 56065 will be attending the WPI FLL Open Event on June 12-14 in Worcester, MA. All winners are listed here.