How to Join an FLL Team

Overall teams are organically grown, and either are created through a school, neighborhood, or community.  Once a team is created, they typically have the core members from the inception of the team and continue through when the whole team ages out of the program.  The way to prolong a team is by including siblings joining the team or other younger friends.  At some point the team will have served the purpose and no longer have the need to continue. 

This does bring up the question of how do I get my child in with a team?

  1. Local School:  Check with the school your kids are attending and see if they have an existing LEGO league team, have had one in the past, or have interest in starting a new team.
  2. Leverage your neighborhood:  Talk with neighbors to see if there is interest in starting a neighborhood team or has there been a team in the neighborhood in the past.  This could include a group of kids that may go to church, Soccer, Baseball, or Football together as well. 
  3. Kids and Friends:  Have your kids talk with their friends to see if they would be interested in starting a group.  Talk with your friends to see if there is a group of parents that would be interested in starting a team.  A good core group of parents is a key to a successful team.
  4. Community based:  This is more for the rural communities.  There are community-based teams that may have started from another group.  An example would be a 4-H, or scouting group in your area. 
  5. Existing teams:  These can be difficult to get involved with, since typically they are already established with their 10-member limit and are not able to accommodate more students.  If they are a neighborhood-based team, they have a core group of members and it may be difficult to break into that core. 

Team Membership Requirements:

  • Minimum of 2 students Maximum of 10
  • 2 adult coaches.  Coaches to be background checked and signed up through FIRST.

Starting a team through FIRST:

Here is a link that really gets into more specifics around starting a team as well as giving you more background on what FIRST LEGO League is all about. 

https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/fll/start-a-team