Under the sea

Royal Middle School robotics team clinches championship with plastic-eating worms

ROYAL CITY — The Royal Middle School Oceanic Outlaws robotics team is headed to Nationals. The eight seventh- and eighth-grade students took home the Champion Finalist award at the FIRST LEGO League state competition in Spokane Jan. 18, according to their coach, RMS science teacher Theresa Piper. “We started robotics back in September, and they've been working really hard on investigating a problem and then developing an innovative solution based on this year's theme for research,” Piper said. “The theme was ocean exploration, and they've been talking to experts all over the world and developing different solutions, testing out and deciding which was the best.”