SBPLI Announces Award Winners of FIRST Tech Challenge Qualifying Tournament at Syosset High School

Members of Team #7120 "Bionica" (left) steer their robot while the members of Team #8109 "Beta Testers" (right) confer with each other during the FIRST Tech Challenge at Syosset High School on March 1.

On March 1, New York City FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), along with School-Business Partnerships of Long Island, Inc. (SBPLI) presented the FIRST Tech Challenge Qualifying Tournament at Syosset High School. Twenty-two teams from Long Island, the metropolitan New York area and Connecticut took part in the daylong competition. 

The FTC is a program through FIRST, which is an organization that focuses on teaching children and young adults STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) skills through stimulating robotics competitions. The FTC tournament requires students in grades seven through twelve to design, build, and program a robot to compete with in an alliance format against other teams. Each year, a different themed challenge is presented to those who participate in the tournament. 

The challenge was "FTC® BLOCK PARTY! SM", in which Alliances of two teams programmed their robots to place plastic blocks onto pendulum goals. During each two-and-a-half minute match, teams also had to raise their team flag up a flagpole, elevate their robots off the ground using a platform pull-up bar, and finish the match with a balanced pendulum to earn extra points. 

Following the tournament, an award ceremony was presented by the FIRST judges. Different teams won trophies for various categories that represented a range of qualities, such as teamwork, creativity, and inspiration. The winners are listed below:





AWARD

TEAM #

TEAM NAME

HOMETOWN

Motivate Award

6154

BotMasters

Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of Nassau County, Merrick and Farmingdale, NY

Connect Award

7035

Radical Robots

Girl Scouts of Suffolk County, NY

Rockwell Collins Innovate Award

7407

Team Vega

Half Hollow Hills, NY

PTC Design Award

123

Vanguard

Syosset, NY

Think Award *

7120

Bionica

Hewlett, NY

Alliance Award Winner

4017

RoboPandas

Sewanhaka, NY

Alliance Award Winner *+

6942

Pandemonium2

West Babylon, NY

Alliance Award Finalist

7417

Portledge School

Locust Valley, NY

Alliance Award Finalist *++

6722

Knights Who Say C

Independent

Inspire Award 1st Place *

4183

Icebreakers

Girl Scouts of Nassau County, Merrick, NY

Inspire Award 2nd Place *

8073

Quantum Chaos

Rocky Point, NY

Inspire Award 3rd Place *

3981

Gold Griffins

Bronx, NY

* Indicates that these teams will move onto the NYC/Long Island Regional Championship Event at NYU/Polytechnic Institute on March 8. 

*+ Pandemonium2 was the first team selected to the Winning Alliance and will compete in the NYC/Long Island Regional Championship (Please note: Team #123, "Vanguard" from Syosset, hosted the event and will also attend the NYC/Long Island Regional Championship). 

*++ Radical Robots was captain of the Alliance Finalist and will compete in the NYC/Long Island Regional Championship. 

Sponsors included School-Business Partnerships of Long Island, Inc., Syosset Central School District, Rockwell Collins, PTC, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Bloomberg and ConEdison.