Middle and High School Students who are interested in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) may participate in Valley Lutheran School’s FIRST Tech Challenge Team (FTC) for Middle Schoolers or the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) for High Schoolers. Here, students design, build, program, test and drive a robot in competitions against other teams in local, regional and world competitions. Each team must develop an Engineering Notebook, create and update a business plan, and work within a budget. Our FTC and FRC teams are dedicated to outreach and sharing STEM concepts within the community.

Valley’s FIRST Teach Challenge team for middle schoolers, Crossfire, has progressed rapidly:

• In the 2015-2016 season, Crossfire’s rookie year, the team was the State Champion winning alliance team and competed at the Super-Regional level.
• During the 2016-2017 season, Team Crossfire was awarded two of the highest achievements from FIRST, the Motivate and the Inspire Awards. The team once again traveled to the Super-Regional level.
• By the 2017-2018 school year, our team qualified for the World FTC Competition where only the top 4% of teams compete. Their award winning design was named Melvin. 
• During the 2018-2019 season as well as 2019-2020, the team made a return visit to Worlds.

For the 2019-2020 season, Valley’s first FIRST Robotics Competition team, made up solely of high school students, competed succeeding in making it to World’s after winning at the Super-Regional level. Sadly, the World First Robotics Competition was cancelled due to COVID. During the 2020-2021 school year, the competition was completely different due to COVID so the team did not participate. The team is excited for what the 2021-2022 season holds!