Miller Place HS Robotics Team Shoots and Scores at FIRST Competition

The Miller Place High School Robotics team finished in the top third of teams competing in the Regional #2 competition of the 2022 FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Long Island Competition. In the Regional #1 round, Miller Place landed in the top 20 of the 39 teams competing.

This is the first year the regional games, hosted by the School-Business Partnerships of Long Island at Hofstra University, were held in person since the start of the pandemic. The event was canceled in 2020 and held virtually last year. This year’s competition was held throughout the week of March 20 to March 26.

The Miller Place team, named Entropy, finished Regional #1 with six wins, five losses and one tie. They came back strong in the Regional #2 competition with seven wins and three losses. Their performance enabled the team to reach the quarterfinals of the competition.

The year’s regional challenge, dubbed Rapid React, tasked teams with using their robots to shoot balls into goals at assorted heights. Robots were also given 30 seconds at the end of each match to climb up a series of bars to garner additional points for their teams. The competition also provided for teams forming alliances with other schools, whom they would compete with in different challenges. In the Regional #1 competition, Miller Place formed an alliance with Center Moriches and Huntington. In the Regional #2 competition, Miller Place’s Entropy team scored high enough to be named an alliance captain. In this round of the competition, Miller Place teamed up with the Wheatly School in Old Westbury and international competitors from St. Michael’s School in the Dominican Republic.

Despite not moving past the quarterfinals, Miller Place made it through six days of activity without a single mechanical failure. “Overall, I’m very happy with the way we did, especially with not competing in two years due to COVID, stated Mike Stano, the team’s coach and a technology teacher at Miller Place High School. “We learned a lot from this year’s competition, which will allow us to make some changes that should result in us being more competitive at next year’s competition.”

FIRST is a nonprofit based in Manchester, New Hampshire that was founded by inventor and entrepreneur Dean Kamen to inspire young people to pursue further studies and careers in science and technology. The nonprofit launched its competition in 1992. Miller Place first competed in 2001. Each year, FIRST invites about 50 schools from Long Island and additional schools from across the metropolitan area, the country and from around the globe. Students are given six weeks to design and build a robot that weights up to 120 pounds and fulfills a set of rules and challenges that change each year.

For more information about the Miller Place School District, please visit the District’s website at www.millerplace.k12.ny.us. To read more about the great things happening in Miller Place Schools, visit www.millerplaceinthemedia.com and ‘like’ our Facebook page.