FIRST® Tech Challenge RELIC RECOVERYSM Qualifying Tournaments Set to Begin on Long Island

The FIRST® Tech Challenge season – dubbed FIRST RELIC RECOVERYSM (presented by Qualcomm) – will begin on Sunday, January 7, 2018 with a Qualifying Tournament at Lynbrook High School. Four additional events will be hosted at Center Moriches and Sewanhaka High Schools in the weeks to follow. Presented locally by School-Business Partnerships of Long Island, Inc. (SBPLI), FIRST® Tech Challenge inspires students age 12 to 18 to pursue an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. 

Working alongside adult mentors, more than 46,000 students in nearly 20 countries have spent the last several months designing, building, programming and operating robots to play a floor game in an alliance format on a 12-foot by 12-foot field. This season, FIRST Tech Challenge teams across the world are asked to don their adventurers’ hats to create robots capable of retrieving opponent-colored jewels from platforms, scoring glyphs into crypto boxes, creating cipher patterns, moving “relics” to a recovery zone and parking their robots on “balancing stones.”

Students demonstrate their problem-solving skills, creative thinking, teamwork, competitive play, sportsmanship and sense of community. During all FIRST Tech Challenge tournaments, teams work to score points, awarded through accomplishing the aforementioned tasks, during 150 seconds of game play, which includes autonomous and driver-controlled periods. 

The 2018 FIRST Long Island Qualifiers will be held as follows:

Sunday, January 7, 2018 at Lynbrook High School

Sunday, January 13-14, 2018 at Center Moriches High School

Saturday, January 27-28, 2018 at Sewanhaka High School

 
Awards that will be given during each tournament include:

Inspire Award: team that best exemplifies the spirit of FIRST Tech Challenge
Think Award: team that best manages the engineering design process
Connect Award: team most connected to the local and engineering communities
Rockwell Collins Innovate Award: team with the most ingenuity and inventiveness
PTC® Design Award: team with the most compelling industrial design elements
Motivate Award: team acts as Ambassadors for FIRST; exemplifies outstanding outreach/recruitment efforts
Control Award: team that uses sensors and software to enhance the robot’s functionality on the field
Winning Alliance Award: alliance that wins the final elimination rounds
Finalist Alliance Award: alliance in the final match of the competition
 
Students will compete at these events for a chance to ultimately advance to the FIRST Long Island Championship presented by SBPLI at Smithtown High School West on Sunday,
February 11, 2018. Three teams from the FIRST Long Island Championship will go on to the Super-Regional Championship Tournament in Pennsylvania, and may then advance to the FIRST Tech Challenge World Championship in April. 

“Since launching locally last year, FIRST Tech Challenge has grown into a powerful program for students across Long Island, and we are excited to see what the teams have come up with,” says Janet Anderson, Program Director and SBPLI/FIRST Long Island representative. “We are grateful to all of the high schools that are working with us to present FIRST Tech Challenge events and to showcase our local STEM talent. We look forward to continued partnerships with these districts.” 

For more information on SBPLI or the FIRST Long Island Robotics, please visit www.sbpli-lifirst.org.

 
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About FIRST®  
Accomplished inventor Dean Kamen founded FIRST® (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) in 1989 to inspire an appreciation of science and technology in young people. Based in Manchester, N.H., FIRST designs accessible, innovative programs to build self-confidence, knowledge, and life skills while motivating young people to pursue opportunities in science, technology, and engineering. With support from over 200 of the Fortune 500 companies and more than $30 million in college scholarships, the not-for-profit organization hosts the FIRST® Robotics Competition for students in Grades 9-12; FIRST® Tech Challenge for Grades 7-12; FIRST® LEGO® League for Grades 4-8; and FIRST® LEGO® League Jr. for Grades K-4. Gracious Professionalism® is a way of doing things that encourages high-quality work, emphasizes the value of others, and respects individuals and the community. To learn more about FIRST, go to www.firstinspires.org.

About School-Business Partnerships of Long Island, Inc.
School-Business Partnerships of Long Island, Inc. (SBPLI) is a fully volunteer-run 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 1984 by Fred Breithut with the goal of developing partnerships between local high schools and businesses. His goal was to provide students with practical experience and curriculum development, while helping the business community develop its future workforce, which resulted in the formation of over 100 partnerships. In 1999, SBPLI brought the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) to Long Island, which featured just eight FIRST Robotics Competition high school teams. Since then, the Long Island Regional FIRST Robotics Competition has grown to over 50 teams competing each year. SBPLI also hosts Long Island’s annual FIRST LEGO League Qualifying and Championship Tournaments and the FIRST LEGO League Jr. Expos, in which over 2,000 elementary and middle school students from Nassau and Suffolk Counties take part each year. In 2016, SBPLI added the FIRST Tech Challenge to its roster of programs. For more information about the programs, or to learn how to become a sponsor, visit www.sbpli-lifirst.org.