Locust Valley High School/Middle School welcomed more than a dozen robotics teams to its school gym for the FIRST Long Island Robotics Competition qualifying tournament on Feb. 3 and 4.
Locust Valley teachers and student volunteers along with FIRST staff helped turn the school gymnasium into an arena with two grids for the robot matches and a pit area for teams to test and adjust their creations as needed.
Two Locust Valley teams, the ninth grade FalconBots and 10-12th grade Team Kuiper, competed against and formed alliances with 14 teams on Feb. 3 and another 21 teams on Feb. 4. Each team spent the last few months of the school year building its bots to navigate obstacle courses, shoot paper planes as far and they can and stack plastic pieces on a board.
The FalconBots and Team Kuiper finished first and second, respectively, in the qualifying rounds on and formed an alliance that won in the finals. As the winning alliance, both teams advanced to the Long Island Championships in Mineola on March 2.