Team Gold brought a state championship to Barrington last weekend.

The group of Barrington Middle School students captured first place at the First Lego League Robotics State Championship on Saturday, Jan. 28. The competition was held at East Providence High School.

Team Gold captured the top prize, which goes to the team that shows excellence in all areas of the challenge — coding and designing an autonomous robot, innovating a solution on the real-world problem of renewable energy, and core values. 

Barrington Middle School’s Team Gold, along with second-place Robotic Terriers from North Cumberland Middle School, will move on to the global competition.

Members of Team Gold are Matt Tian, Quinn Spencer, Tripp Spencer, Ryan Zaluski, Leo Ellis, Aahan Ananthakrishna, Christian Leigh, Mie Green and Afraz Raman. 

Melanie Cotnoir is a science teacher and robotics coach at Barrington Middle School.

Other awards

• Excellence in Core Values — AIRStrike Omega from Aquidneck Island Robotics, a community robotics team educating in STEM through competitive robotics.  

• Excellence in Innovation Project — The Thunderbolts from Pontaganset Middle School in North Scituate. Their innovative solution involves reuse of nuclear waste water. 

• Excellence in Robot design and coding — Quest United, from Quest Montessori School in Narragansett.

• This year a judge’s award was given to a rookie team from Ella Risk Elementary, Power Spinners. This group of third- and fourth-graders showed great spirit, clever innovation and skill in coding their LEGO robot.