by Trevor Hass
Sports Reporter
Nick Balmanno, Aidan Barnes and Julia Balmanno’s eyes all light up when asked about their favorite kind of pizza.
Nick prefers stuffed-crust cheese pizza from Pizza Hut. Aidan fancies the barbecue chicken from Chanticlear Pizza in Blaine. Julia pauses, then she decides on sausage from Domino’s.
“Everybody likes pizza,” Nick, 15, said.
The FLL Minions are going to the state competition for the third time in the last five years.
That’s why Nick, Aidan, Julia, their four teammates and their project leader, Beth Balmanno, decided to design reusable pizza boxes for their First Lego League robotics team. They figured they needed something that everyone genuinely loves – not something like milk or yogurt.
Since they first had the idea, they’ve talked to a host of people – from New York City Pizza Tour host Scott Wiener to a member of T.O. plastics to environmental technician Kristen Mroz and many others – and their hard work earned them a trip to the state competition Feb. 20.
The FLL Minions, who have T-shirts with their team names, have earned a trip to state in three of the past five seasons. This year, they were one of 66 teams to go to state out of 632 total teams throughout Minnesota. If they win state, they could go to St. Louis, San Diego (that’s their top choice) or Arkansas, but they have a bigger goal than winning the competition.
“It would be great to place at the state competition, but their eyes are set on that bigger prize, which is really seeing the program be implemented here,” Beth Balmanno said. “They’ve taken a lot of really great steps to see that happen, so fingers crossed.”
With this pizza box, customers would bring a dirty box to a pizza place, where they’d swap it out for a new, reusable one. The dirty one would be washed at the pizza place and ready to be shipped out once again shortly thereafter. This idea matches the goal of the project, which is to reduce trash in the community.
The exciting thing about their idea is that it’s not farfetched, and it’s already gaining traction.
“You are switching out boxes, which creates a loyalty program for your company,” Aidan, 13, said. “If someone throws it in the trash, it’s decomposable, and they can also recycle it.”
They reached out to Wiener, who gave constructive feedback to talk to city officials who could help turn their brainchild into a reality.
“He told us that we were on the right track with plastic pizza boxes, but that we should consider going to the city, so that’s what we did,” Julia, 10, said.
If reusable pizza boxes start sweeping Elk River and beyond in the next few months, the FLL Minions will know they reached their goal.
Crusaders forge ahead
Seven middle school students sit around a table in the bottom floor of St. John’s Lutheran Church and School. They flip through binders that showcase their work, talk proudly of all they’ve done and detail what they hope to do.
This is a place where every possible skill comes together. There’s author Emma Gripp, engineer and programmer Jacob Lind, natural leader Elaina Kuhnau, ambassador Nikolas Nelson, dependable worker Benjamin Banaszak, designer Colin Anderson and Renaissance man Joe Sweet.
Together, they form the Cybernetic Crusaders, a FLL Robotics group in its first year as a club at the school. Next year, robotics coach David Inselmann hopes to create two teams, but for now he’s extremely proud of all his team has accomplished. The Crusaders earned first place in Lego Robot Design at one competition and first place for their project at a second competition, which means they are advancing to the state competition Feb. 20.
“It’s been an amazing experience, and it’s very helpful to have all the people we have on our team,” Emma said. “They all have different roles, which have played an amazing part in getting us to this level.”
The robotics club is run like a gifted and talented program. Members did extensive research and spent six weeks building their robot, and they received an award for their robot design in the regional competition. In the sectional tournament, the team won an award for its research project, which is extremely rare, especially for a first-year team.
The project is called Eco-Scan, and it is a solar-powered device that uses recycled materials to monitor aquatic life in Minnesota’s lakes and rivers. They are using recycled cellphones. Elaina was running at Twin Lakes Park for cross-country, when she came across a sign that was talking about Zebra Mussels, an invasive species.
The Cybernetic Crusaders have excelled in their first year.
That’s when she came up with the idea of using recycled phones to monitor invasive species that affect Minnesota’s lakes and the life that flourishes in them. They did extensive research on the problem and the current solution.
They made their first prototype by following the engineering process. It is powered by a solar cell and run by a recycled cell-phone. The raft section is made out of recycled materials like milk jugs, Styrofoam, plastic water bottles, tape and a mason jar. They keep improving their design and just finished their third prototype.
Dr. Charles Anderson, research supervisor from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, met with the group and called their concept cool, ingenious and amazing.
There are many benefits to the club. One of which is the ability to grow and learn as a student, but another is the bond these students now share with one another. They’ve spent hours and hours on this project and have relished the opportunity to see their ideas come to fruition.
“It’s pretty amazing to see all the skills they’ve mastered,” Inselmann said.