(NORTHSHORE)---It's designed to encourage students to pursue engineering and technology careers and it worked really well, as three Northshore-area high schools took home some honors at the recent 2009 FIRST Robotics Bayou Regional competition held at the University of New Orleans.

FIRST stands for "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology" and it was exactly that for students at Northshore, Hammond, and Mandeville High Schools.

Northshore High in Slidell came home with The Johnson & Johnson Gracious Professionalism Award for outstanding sportsmanship on and off the playing field.

Hammond High took The Judges' Awards for unique efforts, performance or dynamics, during the competition.

Mandeville High took The Rookie All-Star Award, showing a young but strong partnership effort and inspiring students to learn more about science and technology, and The Highest Rookie Seeding Award for the team's standing after the qualifying round.

Mandeville High now moves on to the national competition to be held in Atlanta, Georgia, April 16-18.

The teams had some six weeks to build robots that could perform assigned tasks. There were 31 high school teams nationally, with 13 from Louisiana and 9 from Mississippi.

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