8th grade though Seniors

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

Valley’s FIRST Tech Challenge team, 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 transitioned to a FIRST Robotics Competition team, made up solely of high school students, competed succeeding in making it to Worlds after winning at the Super-Regional level. Sadly, the World First Robotics Competition was canceled due to COVID.
•  During the 2020-2021 school year, the competition was completely different due to COVID so the team did not participate. 
• For the 2021-2022 school year, the team transitioned back to a FTC team. They had an excellent season, especially in light of the idea that almost the whole team were first-year participants as well as their parent coaches/mentors. They made it all the way to the State Finals where they were part of the Gold Division winning alliance. They were honored with the Innovate Award at the Waverly meet in January.
• The 2022-2023 season ended up shorter than the team wanted when they did not end up one of the seven chosen to advance from the League Tournament. But, they learned a lot about themselves as a team and how to work together! They began right away to brainstorm improvements for their robot for the 2023-2024 season!