The Brewster High School community was rooting for the robotics team, CyBearBots, at the FIRST NY Tech Valley Regional Robotics Competition. The play-by-play was sent via email from Donna Schneider, a teacher advisor to the team.
“Qualification match#1 win in the books! Great match for the team and a great start to the day.”
“Lunch break ... great start with two matches and we have four ranking points! Sitting in the top 20 ... eight more matches to go.”
“Match #3 is a win, added two more ranking points.”
“Match #4 Win! Currently ranked #12. Really showing off all their hard work.”
“Qualification match #5 a commanding win over the #1 ranked team. We are now ranked #9.Three more ranking points and four more qualification matches.”
The competition took place last weekend at the MVP Arena in Albany. There were 51 teams from all over New York with names like Electric Fire from Elmira, TroyBotics from Troy, and So Botz from Ogeburg. There were also teams from Canada, Turkey, Sweden and Chinese Taipei–Formosa Pangolin.
“It was really exciting in the arena,” said Riya Gupta, a senior and drive captain for the robot, “and we were strong the entire competition.”
The theme of the competition: Crescendo. Robots start out on a playing field in an alliance zone pre-loaded with foam rings or “notes” which they then play or shoot into “amps;” drivers steer the robots around the field and collect and play additional notes in their amps and “speakers”–notes played in an amplified speaker–are worth more points. Points are added for cooperation and taken away for hitting another robot at its home podium or off the ground.
Cole Wilson said, "it's competitive, but the other students are really smart and respectful, and if you need help with programming or a part for your robot, other schools go out of their way to help out."
Brewster’s team of 20 students, half of whom are graduating seniors, designed a robot, came up with game strategy, 3D printed mechanisms, created prototypes, coded, and connected power sources and sensors. The students ran all aspects of their experience from the drive team to the scouts--who got information on competing teams and worked with alliances--to the safety captain and the pit crew who worked in between matches to fix and check the robot before the next competition.
“Our coder Alex Sosa really helped us out a lot during the competition,” explained senior Arianna Torke. “He actually changed the code so our robot could score multiple times in one turn so we could pick up more ranking points.”
“We also changed our climber system after the last competition to enable our robot to hang for five seconds on a chain which gave us additional points,” said Riya.
Although the team finished 17th out of 51, they were a substitute in the final alliances because of their strong performance and almost got called into the finals. They were the only alliance to beat the #1 team in the entire competition.
“It's been so great to watch them learn and grow over the past four years," said teacher advisor Shannon Reilly, "they have planned this robot and invested so much time, it has been an awesome experience."
The final message of the weekend was sent by Dr. Brittany Kozlenko who received the Woodie Flowers Finalist Award at the 2024 Hudson Valley Regional–an award presented to one mentor within the FIRST Robotics Competition who leads, inspires, and empowers using excellent communication skills.
“We are beyond proud of this team and know that they have created a legacy for the future.”
