Hawai'i kids shined yesterday before a crowd of 20,000 at the Georgia Dome during the FIRST Robotics Competition Championship in Atlanta. Among the spectators was Gov. Linda Lingle.

On the final day yesterday, the "Hawaiian Kids" of Waialua High School, one of six Hawai'i teams at the robotics competition, were presented with the second-highest award of the event — the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Engineering Inspiration Award.

"It's only awarded to one team in the whole country," Lingle said after the presentation. "It's been so gratifying to watch. You could just see from when the kids began this — through our regional, and then this — that the level of confidence in their ability to achieve difficult things has just shot up.

"Whether they won or didn't win, everybody here talked about the teams and kids from Hawai'i. ... And Waialua winning this award is just a tremendous honor."

The Atlanta robotics event was the culmination of months of competition involving more than 1,500 teams. FIRST is a not-for-profit robotics competition founded by inventor Dean Kamen and a group of engineers and professionals. Using various parts, school teams design and build robots that perform challenging tasks to advance toward winning regional and ultimately, the FIRST Robotics Competition Championship.

McKinley High School's "Team Kika Mana" came in fourth in its 84-team division, advancing to the semifinals, where they competed in two final rounds before being eliminated.

In addition to Waialua and McKinley, four other teams from the state — Honoka'a, Radford, Waiakea and Sacred Hearts Academy — competed against 337 other teams from the United States, Brazil, Canada, Mexico and Israel.

Hawai'i robotics teams' final division standings were: Honoka'a — 41st out of 85 teams (Newton Division); McKinley — 4th out of 84 teams (Curie Division); Radford — 74th out of 84 teams (Curie Division); Sacred Hearts — 41st out of 86 teams (Galileo Division); Waiakea — 38th out of 85 teams (Archimedes Division); and Waialua — 65th out of 85 teams (Newton Division).

The number of Hawai'i high schools competing in FIRST Robotics jumped from four teams to 25 during the past year. Lingle said the goal between now and next year is to double that number.

This year's winning alliance of the FIRST Robotics Competition Championship was the "Robowranglers" of Greenville High School from Greenville, Texas; the "ThunderChickens" of Utica Community Schools from Sterling Heights, Mich.; and the "Simbotics" of Governor Simcoe Secondary School from St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada.