The eighth annual FIRST LEGO League competition embraced an environmental theme this year and drew more than 1,000 elementary and middle-school students as willing participants, The Denver Post reported Sunday.

Each team was required to use a LEGO robotics kit to create tools to complete five missions.

Among those tasks included having teams lasso miniature oil barrels in a simulated environmental crisis.

Energizing Energizers team coach Christina Stephens, whose team represented the only all-girl group in Saturday's event, said the solutions had to remain environmentally sound.

"But you can't get anything in the water because that would be polluting," Stephens, whose team won the annual event, told the Post.