Tappan Zee High School robotics team prepares for competition
Tappan Zee High School‘s FIRST Robotics Competition team is practicing for the upcoming World Championship in Houston, which is April 17-20. The robot will be picking up plastic rings and shooting them into a target structure.
The FIRST Robotics Competition is a rigorous competition in which each team builds a robot to complete the objectives given on the day of kickoff. Teams are given six weeks to design, build, and program their robot before they must package it away. Teams are then only allowed to use their robot at competitions.
“We are SO BOTZ, Team 6911 from Tappan Zee High School in Orangeburg, NY,” said Molly Culot, team project manager. “Our team was founded in 2017 and this year we have a total of 71 members and 51 what we like to call competitive members who attend frequently and attend competitions with our team. This year we were very successful in the three of our regional competitions. We were finalists in two of them and at one of our competitions we won an award known as the Engineering Inspiration Award.”
About the robotics team
SO BOTZ was founded in 2017 and has earned its way to the World Championship three times in its seven-year history. Accomplishments this year:
- Team 6911 was on the finalist alliance (placed second) at both the Hudson Valley Regional in Suffern and the Tech Valley Regional in Albany.
- At the Finger Lakes Regional in Rochester, the team received the Engineering Inspiration Award, which “celebrates outstanding success in advancing respect and appreciation within a team’s school or organization and community” for their extensive STEM outreach efforts. This achievement qualified them for the World Championship in Houston, April 17-20.
- At the Tech Valley Regional, Calum Tjon was named a Dean’s List Finalist, which qualified him to attend the World Championship as an individual. This is the highest level of individual recognition, which is awarded for leadership, technical expertise and contributions to their team’s success. He is the third SO BOTZ member in the team’s history to receive this recognition. There is a luncheon for Dean’s List Finalists at the World Championship, at which a small number of all the finalists from teams around the world are selected as winners.
Major team sponsors include Orange & Rockland Utilities, Werfen, Goosetown Communications, Celtic Sheet Metal and the Gene Haas Foundation.
More about this year’s game can be found here: https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/frc/game-and-season. Championship matches will be streamed and can be viewed here: https://www.firstchampionship.org/watch.
