This past Saturday the Sachem Schools FIRST Robotics Team #263, known also as “Team Aftershock”, packed up their 2012 robot named “Sigma”, and won the inaugural Half Hallow Hills (HHH) Invitational meet
Sigma’s goal is to shoot and score baskets with a smaller basketball after acquiring and loading them into its feeder system.
The Sachem Robotics team had traveled many miles with the 2012 robot build – Suffield, CT; New York, NY; Hofstra, NY; and then the FIRST Robotics 2012 Championship event in St. Louis, MO – the HHH Invitational would be the last major competitive event for Sigma.
There were 22 robotics teams in attendance on Saturday, and through many preliminary rounds of competition the Sachem robot performed well. When the top four teams had to choose two additional team to form their alliances – the top team, Miller Place (#514) chose Hauppauge (#358) and Sachem (#263) to compete with them in the semi-final rounds.
At the end of the semi-final rounds the alliance that Sachem was a part of, now advanced to the finals. They would face the other finalist alliance of Brentwood, Patchogue-Medford, and Cold Spring Harbor.
It would take winning two out of three rounds of competition to win the finals – the alliance Sachem was in went out onto the field of play and won the first two rounds. There would be no finals third round played today.
The Sachem Robotics Team: “Aftershock” is a combined effort of students and alumni from both East and North campuses of Sachem High School. Each year the Robotics Team builds a new 120-pound robot to compete in the FIRST robotics competitions against other teams from all across the country and world. Their competitions take place regionally on Long Island, New York City, Connecticut and nationally in St. Louis, Missouri. Students work together and with teachers and engineers from several companies across the area to build a robot from the ground up.
During competitions this year the Sachem team used a four position team setup – driver, shooter, mentor and human player. However, there were many others involved in building Sigma – mechanical, electrical, programming, and communications. Truly a team effort to make this robot perform successfully on the field of play.
The Sachem Robotics team would like to thank the Sachem School Board for their continued support, the teams many sponsors, and many parents/family/friends for their continued support also.
The team is now looking forward to the announcement of the 2013 build that will be on January 5th, 2013 with a regional kickoff announcement meet-up being held at Stony Brook University.
-Words by Ed Christiansen
