The Dallas County 4-H club recently sent a team of budding engineers to Johnston to compete in the Lego League regional qualifying competition, and walked away with some hardware.

Calling themselves “Machine Magicians,” the team was one of several from around Central Iowa competing last Sunday at Johnston High School. The teams were required to build robotic machines out of Legos, which they must program to perform a series of tasks. They also create a presentation about the competition’s theme, which this year was Hydrodynamics. Teams are judged on how many tasks their robots can perform, the design, their presentation, and their team work.

The Machine Magicians won Champion and Global Innovation Awards, which will allow them to advance to the state competition at Iowa State University on January 14th.