Fruit Salad (awesome name, right?), an all girl robotics team from Illinois, was selected to compete in the upcoming FIRST LEGO League team competition, which will be held in Pamplona, Spain. The team was chosen along with only seven other teams from Canada and the US from a pool of 14,000. The The Chicago Tribune reports:

FIRST LEGO League is an international program for youths ages 9 to 14 that aims to increase interest in science, technology, math and engineering and teach employment and life skills.

As competitors in the FIRST LEGO League, the girls had to build and program a Lego Mindstorms robot, research and develop a solution to a real world problem, and practice FIRST core values of gracious professionalism and coopertition.

The team won the first place champion’s award in its regional competition in December followed by the second place champion’s award in the Northern Illinois state tournament in February, earning them a rare spot in the international competition.

The team worked constantly since September, meeting in groups of two for 90 minutes on weekdays and as a whole group for three hours every Sunday. The group surpassed their goal of making it to state and can’t wait to meet teams from 70 countries around the world.

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