Brunswick partners with NYM School

By Tucker Henderson

Reporter

LEGO League has returned for its second year at the New York Mills School and students are hard at work learning the ins and outs of computer coding, presentation and problem-solving skills.  ¶  The program began after Tony and Stephanie VonRuden brought their son to a LEGO Convention in Fargo in 2024 for his birthday. As they watched demonstrations and read through a flyer from an organization called First Lego League, which detailed the basics of starting a Lego Robotics league within a school, the couple decided it would be a great opportunity to bring back home.  ¶  “We got all the information and we started getting everything all set up between the school,” said coach Tony VonRuden. “Our next big thing was getting funding for it and the first group that we went to was Lunds and with open arms, they said they wanted to be our number one sponsor of it. With their very generous donation, we were able to get all of our kits ordered and everything set up for the 2024 season.”

With another donation from Lunds for the 2025 season, the team quickly got to work with students between fourth grade and eighth grade working together to learn to code, learning critical thinking and problem-solving skills, presentation and more. Between four coaches and 14 students, the team is a bit smaller than it was last year.

“This year we actually brought it down,” said VonRuden. “We learned last year that having such big groups, we had too many kids on each team, so not everybody got to get that hands on experience with the robots, so we brought it down to having 14 kids.”

Each Tuesday, the team commits to an hour and a half practice after school to work on their robots and solve problems in their projects, including their innovation project which has an archeology theme this year.

“They have to pick an issue that archeologists are facing on a daily basis on their dig sites and anything like that,” said VonRuden. “It gives the kids an opportunity to figure out, how can I make this better? What can we change to make things different?”

“It gives them that opportunity, not only to try out the robots, but it also incorporates public speaking skills for them and being able to get up in front of a panel of judges,” he continued. “It’s a five minute speech with four or five kids on the team speaking, but getting them up front and being able to instill those public speaking skills early on is beyond great.”

VonRuden looked forward to seeing students return for the second year as well as new ones who wanted to join in. As they built excitement for the team, he sees the need for sharing the excitement to students who become eligible to participate as the elder students age out of the program.

“As a coach, it gives me a good feeling that the kids liked what they were doing and wanted to come back, but it’s also cool because now that we’ve got everything all set up, it’s so much fun to be able to push our Lego stuff down the hall and you have all of these kids asking about it,” said VonRuden. “Really getting that excitement around for the next generations coming up that is eligible to do it.”

The Lego League utilizes a 4×8 foot mat where they complete anywhere up to 15 different missions and collaborate as a group to come up with different designs to complete each challenge.

“To watch them actually program the robots to go and do that and watching their faces light up when they have an ‘ah-ha’ moment, and then they can go on to their next mission,” said VonRuden. “It is so much fun to see that growth in them and especially when you get into competitions as well, because they give the teams a time to do a practice run on the boards and to watch them say ‘oh, we need to make a tweak here,’ and go back to their stations and they make their minor tweaks. As a coach, it’s awesome to see the learning and their ability to adapt to adversities.”

“I’m thankful for the coaches that are able to come and help out, it’s all volunteer on that front and to be able to to take their time and help,” he finished, “and also for the kids to be able to take their time and stay after school and try to be as mindful and on-track as possible.”

The Lego League was invited on a tour of the Lund Boats facility in NY Mills on Monday to showcase the importance of STEM careers in today’s job market. Matt Geiser, Director of Operations and Dan Anonen, Senior Manager of Product & Portfolio Strategy, guided the tour and explained the inner workings of the New York Mills facility of Lund Boats and Brunswick Boat Group. Lund Boats President, Jerome Johnston, also answered some of the students’ questions.

“I think it would be great to inspire them to think a little bit differently about their projects and their challenges that they go through,” said Johnston of the sponsorship of Lego League. “If by seeing the automated robot that we have in our production facility, maybe some of the boat designs, that’s going to inspire them to think differently about how they build things, get creative.”

I think it will be great to inspire more children to get involved in Lego League itself, it would be great for Lund to host some changes specifically around Lego League, tying it to manufacturing, tying it to the boating industry, and then ideally, get these kids back for another tour, maybe a workshop.”

With two years of sponsorship of the Lego League, Lund Boats has no thought of stopping as teaching students about STEM programming and guiding many to their dream careers is something they feel strongly about supporting.

“The essence of Lund is really the innovation behind how we design boats and find ways to better build boats as well,” said Johnston “Sponsoring STEM and fostering youth coming up through the ranks in the technical side—ideally they either work as engineers or proto-techs—go to a university and get a degree, come back and help us design boats! STEM is going to benefit Lund of the longterm and the community as well.”