The Eldon Upper Elementary robotics team is headed to the FIRST LEGO world championship.
For the second consecutive year, Eldon will compete among 500,000 teams on their robot design, presentation and core values.
Coaches Colleen Abbott, Twyla Limbach and Corey Matthias will accompany 10 students and their parents to the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas.
A pep-rally to send off the group was Friday.
"There's not a single person up here that made this team go forward," Abbott said. "There's a lot of people who have helped in a lot of ways. The community is what makes a trip like this possible."
After the group learned their second-place win on the state level in Camdenton advanced them to the world championship, they began fundraising for the six-day trip.
The team Eldon Gearheads includes: fourth-graders Sam Naught, Jayda Hibler and Edmund Kaibel; fifth-graders Brenner Johnson, C.J. Moyeda, Damien McLaughlin and Braxton Edinger; and sixth-graders Kendyl Jones, Owen Martin and Aiden Allison.
Part of the club is funded by the 21st Century Community Learning Center grant. The Learning Enriched Afterschool Program, which offers after-school clubs for the district, received a five-year grant for $400,000. Eldon has six teams from elementary through high school.
The Gearheads will present on the sustainability of life for astronauts in space. After learning it cost $50,000 to send a single water bottle into space, the group thought of a way for astronauts to grow their own food.
A machine would take human waste and process it for fertilizer. Special pill pockets would be used to grow the plants.
In the club, students learn how to engage with the community, how to think critically and the importance of team work.
Abbott said this will be the first flight for many of the students and possibly their largest international experience. The school is not very diverse, she added, and the trip offers more opportunities.
Johnson said he is not nervous for the trip because he competed last year. In 2018, team RoboH20 went to the world championship.
Although they considered missing the trip after the unexpected death of coach Jerry Barsby, the team went on in his memory.
This year, Abbott said they are going knowing he would be proud.