The Raiders of the Mummified Five is a group of five fifth-grade girls from Lakeside Elementary. Their season started in July of 2025 with team building and the season launched in August. For some, this was their first year participating in FIRST Lego League, which was established with a $10,000 grant from the East Grand Rapids Schools Foundation.
At the regional competition in December, the girls took third place. Over the next three weeks, they worked hard to improve to get ready for the state competition, where there were more than 900 teams from across the state competing.
At the end of the state competition, the girls in the Raiders of the Mummified Five waited along with all the other teams to learn whether their hard work since finishing third at regionals had paid off.
The moment can be best summed up by Abby Vizachero, one of the team members: “Near the end of the announcements, they hadn’t called us for any awards, so I thought I just wanted to go home and go to bed after a long day," Abby says. "I didn’t think there was any chance they would call our team as they were counting down to the winner."
So imagine the thrill for Abby and her teammates when the final announcement was that the Raiders of the Mummified Five had won the state championship! "After they called our name it took a minute to register as everyone was yelling, ‘Get up! Get up!’ and pushing us to go and get the champions awards," Abby says. "I started crying and felt excited and hugged my dad as we celebrated. We had dreamed of going to worlds and it was coming true!”
The girls' first place finish earned them a trip to the World Championships in Houston to represent East Grand Rapids alongside more than 1,000 teams from 66 countries.
Another grant from the Foundation is helping fund that trip. We'll have a report from Worlds soon!
