School-Business Partnerships of Long Island, Inc. (SBPLI) announced its award winners at the LI FIRST Regional Robotics Competition at Hofstra University’s David S. Mack Sports and Exhibition Complex (Arena) in Hempstead, New York. The event was held on March 27-28.

More than 1,100 students from 47 high schools from Long Island, the New York metropolitan area, New Jersey and Ohio participated in the competition. Teams received honors and recognition that rewarded design excellence, competitive play, sportsmanship and high-impact partnerships between schools, businesses and communities.

“All teams demonstrated tremendous teamwork, professionalism and strategic thinking, but these winners went above and beyond to overcome the challenges of the competition,” said Fred Breithut, Founder & Chairman of School-Business Partnerships of Long Island, sponsors of the Long Island Regional FIRST Competition. “The fun and excitement of the competition was evident as many students, professional mentors, school groups and community members caught the spirit and came to cheer on their favorite teams as engineering and technology at work surpassed the excitement of a championship athletic event.”

With the hope of winning one of several coveted awards, high school students worked with professional mentors to design and build a robot over a six-week timeframe that solves a problem using a kit of parts and a standard set of rules. The students gathered to compete with their robots in this year’s game, “Lunacy, in which robots are designed to pick up 9-inch game balls and score them in trailers hitched to their opponents' robots for points during a 2-minute, 15-second match. Additional points are awarded for scoring a special game ball, the Super Cell, in the opponents' trailers during the last 20 seconds of the match.

Winners of the SBPLI, Inc. Regional awards include:

Award

Winner

Regional Chairman's Award* (Highest award of the competition)

Team 353, Trio Hardware / Ausco, Inc. & Plainview-Old Bethpage Central School District, Plainview, NY

Reginal Engineering Inspiration Award (Second highest award of the competition)

Team 1601, GIT General Imaging Technology/ The Port Authority of NY & NJ / The White House Restaurant / The Safa Center, New Wave Holistic Health Center / Airborn Flightware & Aviation High School, Long Island City, NY

Regional Winner #1

Team 496, Port Jefferson Robotics Club, Port Jefferson, NY

Regional Winner #2

Team 2638, Great Neck South High School, Great Neck, NY

Regional Winner #3

Team 287, Brookhaven National Lab & William Floyd HS, Mastic Beach, NY

Regional Finalist #1

Team 353, Trio Hardware / Ausco Inc. & Plainview-Old Bethpage Central School District, Plainview, NY

Regional Finalist #2

Team 329, Motorola & Patchogue-Medford High School, Medford, NY

Regional Finalist #3

Team 527, Plainedge High School Red Dragons, No. Massapequa, NY

Chrysler Team Spirit Award

Team 564, Longwood High School, Middle Island, NY

Delphi "Driving Tomorrow's Technology" Award

Team 1468, BAE SYSTEMS & Hicksville High School, Hicksville, NY

General Motors Industrial Design Award

Team 870, Miller Environmental / Westhampton Glass and Metal / Lewis Marine Supply of Greenport / Westhampton True Value Hardware / Hart’s True Value Hardware / North Fork Sanitation / Silicon Valley / Southold PBA / Conway / Port of Egypt Marine / Southold Agway, Southold, NY

Johnson & Johnson Gracious Professionalism

Team 358, Festo / East-West Industries & Hauppauge High School, Hauppauge, NY

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Entrepreneurship Award

Team 329, Motorola & Patchogue-Medford High School, Medford, NY

Motorola Quality Award

Team 102, Ortho Clinical Diagnostics & Somerville High School, Somerville, NJ

Rockwell Automation Innovation in Control Award

Team 271, AUDIBLE.COM/BAE Systems / Verizon / Bad Boys From Bay Shore Ltd. & Bay Shore High School, Bay Shore, NY

Xerox Creativity Award

Team 810, Smithtown Schools, Smithtown, NY

Highest Rookie Seed Award

Team 2875, Cold Spring Harbor High School, Cold Spring Harbor, NY

Imagery Award

Team 1358, Macarthur Generals, Levittown, NY

Underwriters Laboratory Industrial Safety Award

Team 2638, Great Neck South High School, Great Neck, NY

Rookie All Star Award

Team 2875, Cold Spring Harbor High School, Cold Spring Harbor, NY

Rookie Inspiration Award

Team 2869, NASA & Bethpage Union Free School District, Bethpage, NY

Website Award

Team 353, Trio Hardware/Ausco Inc. & Plainview-Old Bethpage Central School District, Plainview, NY

Judges Award

Team 287, Brookhaven National Lab and William Floyd High School, Mastic Beach, NY

Judges Award

Team 533, ITT Industries / BAE SYSTEMS / L3 Communications Narda Microwave & Lindenhurst Senior High School, Lindenhurst, NY

Musical Theme

Team 1803, Paul D. Schreiber H.S., Port Washington, NY

Greening Award

Team 871, West Islip High School, West Islip, NY

* 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.

In addition to the awards given by LI FIRST Regional, SBPLI named Jim Stephenson, Nick Amoruso and Will Recce as Outstanding Volunteers of the year. The Fred Breithut Award went to Daniel Brooks of Longwood High School Robotics Team #564. Debbie Lang, mentor for the Longwood High School Robotics Team #564, received the Woodie Flowers Award.

Major sponsors for this year’s competition were are New York State Sen. Owen Johnson, FESTO, Hofstra University, Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems. Other sponsors include Stony Brook University, Farmingdale State College, DeVry College of New York, and Ziehm Medical, LLC.