A steamHouse Club Team
The Club's robotics team — kids in grades 4–7 building, coding, and competing together.
The Goatrunners are the steamHouse Club's robotics team. Kids design and build autonomous robots, research a real-world problem, and present their work to judges at a regional tournament.
The way we run it, the kids work in crews of three to five. We usually have two to four crews going at once, and we refer to all of them, collectively, as the Goatrunners. Crews build their own robots, run their own research projects, and compete on their own at the tournament; the team is the larger thing they all belong to.
Inside that structure, kids learn to plan together, debate engineering choices, recover from setbacks, and present their work to adults. Tournament results are real; what each crew built between August and November is more real.
This season the Goatrunners compete in FIRST LEGO League — FLL for short — a global robotics program run by FIRST, a worldwide robotics community where crews build an autonomous robot from LEGO components and compete in a tabletop tournament, alongside a research project tied to that season's theme. FLL calls each working group a "team"; ours are the crews described above.
Biodiversity, ecosystems, and how technology, creativity, and research can help us understand and protect natural habitats. The full challenge released August 4 — the season materials are up at FIRST's library — and the season opens with the reveal: the "what should we build?" arguments start immediately. If you're joining, email soon: we need to order and assemble the season's LEGO mission builds for the competition mat before kickoff on August 23. If your kid has ever wanted a legitimate reason to think hard about pollinators, watersheds, or what a robot could do for a wetland, this is the year!
This is the last season of FIRST LEGO League in its current form: LEGO Education and FIRST announced in May that their 28-year partnership ends after this season. We're running the Founders Edition — the SPIKE-based format our coaches and kids know, which continues into a successor competition LEGO Education is launching for 2027–28. What the Goatrunners do next year depends on what those successor formats actually look like in practice. The team continues either way; we'll be honest about the circuit decision when it's time to make it.
Kickoff Sunday, August 23, then Sunday practices running into mid-November. Regional qualifier on a Saturday in November — Nov 7, 14, or 21, TBD; we're watching Colorado FIRST for which tournament we'll attend. Top-25% crews advance to state in early December.
Sundays, 3–5pm. Extra sessions appear nearer the tournament.
4–7.
Three to five kids per crew; two to four crews per season.
Email brenton@steamhouse.club. We'll talk about your kid, the season, and whether the fit is right. Crews are led by Brenton Burnett, Fairmount steamHouse's founder and the team's lead coach — 14 years coaching FIRST LEGO League teams. Register by August 21 — capacity limited, and we're placing the LEGO orders for the competition-mat mission builds now. Volunteer parent coaches needed, too: no robotics experience required — coaches ask questions, kids make the calls. Lead coaches complete FIRST's Youth Protection Program screening, which includes a background check run through FIRST (valid four years).
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Off Sundays: Sep 6 (Labor Day weekend), Sep 27, Oct 11, and the two Sundays around Thanksgiving. The qualifier date posts at coloradofirst.org/fll; state, for advancing crews, lands in early December. Meet dates can shift a little — we confirm the season schedule with families at kickoff.
Cost per kid is $120 on a sliding scale — pay less if that's what you can do, pay more if you want to help cover another family's spot. That covers the team registration with FIRST, the robot kit, and tournament costs. No kid is turned away for cost.
The commitment is real. We expect 90% attendance through the season, and that expectation is not arbitrary. The work crews do together — what to build, what to try, what to research, what to present — is team decision-making, and team decisions are hard to hold together when people are missing. A kid who's there 60% of the time costs the crew more than four-tenths of a kid; the work the crew was doing has to be re-explained, re-decided, or paused. Families should join knowing this is the standard.
Crews form now — register by August 21, capacity limited. Kickoff is Sunday, August 23, and the mission-mat LEGO builds need to be ordered before then. Parent coaches welcome. Tell us about your kid and we'll talk about the season and whether the fit is right.
Email to join