Ardsley Students Win Spot at the National Lego Competition in San Diego

A group of five students from the Ardsley School District will be competing in the  “invitation only” FIRST® LEGO® League (FLL) North American Open Championship this May in San Diego, California.  The Ardsley FLL team included ninth-graders Kruti Sutaria and Laina Patel, eighth –grader Jainil Sutaria, and six-graders, Neha Goel, and Isha Brahmbhatt.  The team earned a spot at the nationals after competing in a regional competition last month, placing second in the overall and winning first place trophies in two out of the four categories.   

Introducing students to real-world engineering challenges, this years FLL competition was called the Nature’s Fury Challenge.  Students were asked to explore awe-inspiring storms, quakes, waves and other natural disasters and create an innovative solution that would help communities affected prepare, stay safe or rebuild.  The students were judged in three areas: robot design and performance, identification of a real world problem, creation of innovative solution and sharing their research; core values associated with working and collaborating as a team.

“We looked into many different problems and finally settled on earthquakes and how to help communities be better prepared for such an event,” said Kruti Sutaria.  “We thought that if we could better predict when and where earthquakes would occur, communities could take action sooner and be safer.”

The team worked very independently and met almost every Friday night for three hours. “Every meeting, the time seemed to go so fast because it was just fun – working as a team and motivating each other - it’s the core values,“  said Sutaria.

The team was well supported by their parents and school community.  The team sought the help of Rajat Goel, Neha’s father, who was the team’s coach, and the guidance of two Ardsley teachers.  David Chason, Science Curriculum Leader in Ardsley High School, guided the students on how piezoelectric sensors could be used along the geologic faults to predict future earthquakes. Dave Ponterio, technology teacher at Ardsley Middle School, critiqued their final presentation and helped perfect it by having the students present their robotic solution to both his 5th and 6th grade classes.

“This team of students was entirely self-motivated.  It is very rewarding as a teacher to see your students engage in extra-curricular activities of this caliber.  We are always happy to support them in such efforts,“ said Ponterio.

The Ardsley team, who achieved the highest Robot Performance score ever in Hudson Valley, is looking forward to competition in May against 76 other teams from throughout the country in California.   “I am very excited about the May competition because I have never been in a national competition before and think it will be very exciting,” said Isha Brahmbhatt. “We don’t really think about how we will do, just want to do our best.”