Hills Robotics on the Rise

Lebron James was named the NBA's Rookie of the Year for the 2003-04 season. 

Over the next few years, his name was already being mentioned alongside the all-time basketball greats. 

Enter the Half Hollow Hills robotics team, aka the Lebron of robot building. 

Potential: unlimited.

The team, made up of about 50 students from East and West high schools, took top rookie honors at the Long Island regional FIRST Robotics Competition in March, earning a trip to the national championship in St. Louis last month.

"I didn't really know what I was getting myself into, but I loved it," said Lawrence Wolf-Sonkin, a freshman at East, of joining the inaugural team.

A few members of the district attended the regional competition at Hofstra last year to see what the fuss around robotics was all about. The national program challenges teams of students and their mentors to design and build a 130-pound robot in a six-week timeframe using a standard "kit of parts" and a common set of rules.

With the backing of school officials, including Superintendent Sheldon Karnilow, who wanted to see a district robotics team lift off before he retired, and a generous grant from the , the “ThunderColts” were in business. 

Over six weeks this winter, team members spent countless hours together assembling a robot that could hang inflatable plastic shapes onto grids, thus collecting points for the team during competition. 

“For our first year, to get out to nationals, we were very proud of the kids,” said Julian Aptowitz, a physics teacher at High School West and the team’s co-advisor, along with fellow teacher Christian Mirchel. 

The team had some trouble deploying a “mini-bot” at the national competition, but during a pizza party last Friday at High School East to celebrate the team’s accomplishments, all of the talk, rightly so, was on how far the team has already come in such a short period of time.

“Building a robot to me sounded impossible, but we did the impossible,” said Alessandro Oliverio, a junior at East. 

Besides bringing together students from both high schools and turning them into close friends, robotics has given students a chance to put their interests to work and see them pay off.

“I’ve always had an interest in engineering, but I never really pursued it,” said Daniella Plasterer, a junior at West, “and when I found out about robotics, it was the perfect chance to do what I like.”

The team, loaded with freshman, will clearly be back next year with a renewed spirit and lessons learned.  Students will step up their fundraising efforts next year and district officials are seeking out corporate sponsors for the team. 

As team members discussed what they learned this year and all the new friends they made along the way while waiting for their pizza to arrive last Friday, Krishna Chatpar, a sophomore at West, cut to the chase.

“Basically if you want to sum up the whole club, this is the sport for the mind,” he said.

A sport the ThunderColts plan on dominating for a long time to come.