Five teams of young people from Benton County won top awards at the state championship of the Intel Oregon FIRST LEGO League 2008 Championship Tournaments on Jan. 17-18. The event was at Liberty High School in Hillsboro.

First place in Robot Performance went to "The Techno Thunderbirds" from Franklin School in Corvallis. The "Pro-Gram Crackers," also from Franklin School, took first place in the Rookie Team Award.

This award is restricted to teams that have never participated in an tournament before who do well in all four categories: robot design, robot performance, the research project and teamwork.

In the robot design category, which honors how well the team was able to explain the design and programming of their robot, second prize went to "The Microchips" of Garfield Elementary in Corvallis and fourth place went to "Global Flying Toxic Pigs" from Ashbrook Independent School in Corvallis.

"The Invaders," a neighborhood team from Philomath, received third place in the teamwork category. The teams from Corvallis and Philomath earned awards for robot design, performance, research and teamwork.

The Oregon Robotics Tournament & Outreach Program offers the FIRST LEGO League pre-engineering program to help young students begin exploring technical careers at an early age. Oregon boasts one of the largest LEGO Robotics programs in the nation.

Intel Corporation and the Oregon University System sponsor and organize the tournament.