School-Business Partnerships of Long Island, Inc. (SBPLI) announced that four FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition (FRC) teams, one FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) team and one FIRST LEGO League (FLL) team from Long Island will represent their region at the FIRST 2011 Championship and World Festival that will take place April 28-30 at the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis, Missouri.

The FRC teams representing Long Island include Patchogue-Medford High School Team #329 “Raiders”; Half Hollow Hills High School Team #3624 “ThunderColts”; Malverne High School Team #884 “Mechanical Mules”; and Plainview-Old Bethpage High School Team #353 “POBots.”

Patchogue-Medford was this year’s Chairman’s Award winner. The Chairman’s Award is the most prestigious award of the event and recognizes the team that embodies the goals and purpose of FIRST and best represents a model for other teams to emulate.

Malverne was the winner of the Regional Engineering Inspiration Award at the Long Island FIRST Robotics Competition, which was held March 24-26 at Hofstra University. Half Hollow Hills won the Rookie All Star Award. Plainview-Old Bethpage was the recipient of the Gracious Professionalism Award.

Winners of the Chairman’s Award are invited to compete in the FIRST Championships in St. Louis, as well as Regional Engineering Inspiration Award, and the Rookie All Star Award.

Teams will compete in the game “LOGO MOTION” in which two alliances of three teams compete on a 27-by-54-foot playing field with poles, attempting to earn points by hanging and assembling logo pieces to form the FIRST logo. Additional points were earned for deploying Mini-Bots to climb the vertical poles.

In addition, Long Island will be represented in St. Louis by FIRST LEGO League Team #752, “Peaced Together” from Bayport, and by FIRST Tech Challenge Team #4183, the “Icebreakers,” from the Girl Scouts of Nassau County in Merrick. Both of these teams won their local Championship events to qualify for the trip to St. Louis.

The “Icebreakers” will compete in the game “Get Over It!”, in which two alliances of two teams each compete on a 12x12-foot square field and attempt to empty baton dispensers filled with six-inch-long PVC tubes into stationary and rolling goals. The field is divided by two cliffs, two bridges and one mountain in the center. Robots will have to “get over” these obstacles to retrieve the batons.

“Peaced Together” will participate in the “Body Forward™” Challenge. To successfully complete the Challenge, teams of young people must conduct research and build and program a LEGO MINDSTORMSâ robot to explore one of the most relevant topics facing the world today: how engineering mixes with traditional biological and medical sciences to advance healthcare. Teams will explore the cutting-edge world of Biomedical Engineering to discover innovative ways to repair injuries, overcome genetic predispositions, and maximize the body’s potential, with the intended purpose of leading happier and healthier lives. Challenge missions include bone repair, rapid blood screening, pace makers, nerve mapping, bionic eyes, and object control through thought.

“We are proud to have these teams that competed in our SBPLI Long Island robotics competitions represent our region in the Championship,” said Janet Anderson, Acting President, SBPLI. “We know that they will bring with them their friendly competitive spirit, their teamwork and problem solving skills and their gracious professionalism.”