One day after the deaths of three leaders in the South Dakota Robotics Association, Rapid City children, parents and adult volunteers paid tribute by carrying on their mission.
“These men were an inspiration to all of us, and we felt that they would want us to carry on,” said Kurt Ronning, the west region coordinator for the South Dakota Lego robotics league. “This is in recognition of them.”
Pilot Brian Blake and passengers Daniel Swets, Kevin Anderson and Joshua Lambrecht died Friday when their charter plane crashed shortly after takeoff in Sioux Falls. The three passengers, volunteer officials with the burgeoning youth Lego robotics league, were traveling to Rapid City to train coaches for a group practice session scheduled for Saturday.
Despite Friday’s tragedy, Saturday’s practice session went on as scheduled at Meadowbrook Elementary.
Adult leaders told the assembled children about the deaths Saturday morning but didn’t dwell on the incident. After that brief announcement, the children went on with what they had planned on doing -- building and programming robots to complete an obstacle course.
“It is really sad. It’s kind of a cloud over the competition. But I think for these kids, things still have to move on,” said Susan Oleson, whose son is on one of the local Lego teams. “Of course everyone here is thinking about the tragedy and has those families in our thoughts and in our prayers.”
The Lego robotics competition is organized by a national group, U.S. FIRST, which stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. The South Dakota Robotics Association is the local affiliate of U.S. FIRST.
U.S. FIRST is prepared to offer assistance to the South Dakota Lego league in the aftermath of Friday’s deaths, spokesman Dennis Garrigan said.
Many people at the U.S. FIRST headquarters knew the victims, particularly Swets, and are still in shock, he said.
“Our hearts and sympathies go out to (Swets’) wife and family, the FIRST Lego League community in South Dakota, and to all the passengers on the plane with Dan,” Garrigan said.
Garrigan said U.S. FIRST is considering appropriate tributes and memorials for Friday’s victims.
In Lego robotics competitions, teams of students build a robot using Lego bricks, and use Lego’s Mindstorms software to program the robot to complete tasks on an obstacle course.
Children working with the Lego robotics learn teamwork, programming and problem-solving skills, among other talents.
Swets, Anderson and Lambrecht had worked with local coaches and organizers but not with the children. That made Friday’s crash easier news for the kids to accept, coaches said.
“It’s a very sad thing, but our students had not been involved with those people at all. To them, it’s an abstract thing, for the most part,” said Georgia Simon, the mother of a student on one of the Lego robotics teams as well as a team coach.
At Saturday’s practice, the students worked on their robots unconcerned by Friday’s accident. Ethan Stebbins, 11, said he enjoyed having to use trial and error -- “I think more errors than trials” – to solve difficult problems. Cameron Buuck, 12, liked learning how to program the robot.
That kind of learning was what Swets, Anderson and Lambrecht were devoted to, said Alan Swanson, a founder of the South Dakota FIRST Lego League.
“They believed strongly in bringing science and technology to the students of South Dakota,” Swanson said. “They were eager to do that across the state.”
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