The district’s robotics team, the Robopandas, competed at the FIRST Tech Challenge Long Island Regional Championship, hosted at Great Neck South High School on March 16.
In the FIRST Tech Challenge, teams design, build and program their robots to compete on a 12' X 12' field, in an alliance format, against other teams. The robots are built from a reusable platform, powered by Android technology and programmed using Java-based programming languages.
At the Long Island Regional Championship, the Robopandas had a perfect match record of 5-0 during the qualification round and were seeded as the #2 ranked team for the following elimination round. Due to their outstanding performance, the team earned the Inspire Award and were recognized as the Finalist Alliance Captain. Sewanhaka High School student Hailey Sethi and New Hyde Park Memorial High School student Zarif Abrar were named as FIRST Dean's List Semi-finalists, a recognition of their leadership and dedication. Robotics team coach Jack Chen, the Career and Technical Education pre-engineering teacher at Sewanhaka High School, was honored with the Compass Award, which recognizes an adult coach or mentor who has given outstanding guidance and support to a team throughout the year and demonstrates to the team what it means to be a “Gracious Professional.”
The Robopandas qualified to advance to the FIRST Robotics World Championships in Houston in April.
“This marks the first time since 2017 that our students will be competing at that level,” Director of Career and Technical Education Dr. Patrick Dunphy said. “It’s a huge achievement for our program, and the students are incredibly excited.”
