Warwick Valley High School’s robotics team wins qualifier

In only its second year of existence, the Warwick Valley High School robotics club earned its first bid to compete in a statewide championship tournament.

The team– aptly named Warwick Robotics– will compete at the New York Excelsior FIRST Tech Challenge Championship at SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Utica on March 14 after winning the New York Excelsior Yonkers Qualifier on Saturday, Jan. 25.

This is Warwick Robotics’ second year as a FIRST Tech Challenge team. The school’s first robotics club was founded by STEM education teacher Michael Stolt at the beginning of the 2018-19 school year and is its advisor.

The Yonkers qualifier drew 21 teams in the state, which came from as far west as Corning. The teams were seeking one of the top three spots in order to advance to the state competition.

Warwick Robotics won four of five matches in the qualification round to become the top seed going into the semi-finals.

Then, it won the first two matches in a best-of-three format in both the semifinal and championship rounds.

“I am so proud of every one of these students and of Mr. Stolt,” Superintendent Dr. David Leach said. “This club has accomplished so much in just two short years and that success can be directly attributed to the exceptional and growing STEM program we have in the Warwick Valley Central School District, and the incredible motivation of our students as well as their love for robotics.”

What is the FIRST Tech Challenge?

FIRST Tech Challenge teams are challenged to design, build, program and operate robots that build a structure in competitions.

Teams use supplied building components and fabricate custom parts to build their robots based on engineering principles and document the robot-building process.

They use Java to program the robots for an autonomous portion of each competitive match.

The teams compete in a head-to-head challenge in an alliance format, which pairs two teams to work together for individual matches against another alliance of two teams.

Four robots – one from each team – run on the tournament field at once.

“All their hard work and dedication," Stolt said, "really paid off for them.”

The team has 19 students in grades 9 through 12. The students are divided into groups that handle robot building, outreach and fundraising and engineering documentation of the team. They have been meeting twice a week since September.

On Jan. 11, the team placed second overall at the Peekskill FIRST Tech Challenge.

“Coming so close to winning the final created an even greater drive to do better," Stolt said.

'Sheila,' the robot

The students worked three hours each evening for the past two weeks to revamp the robot they informally nicknamed “Sheila,” making improvements on weaknesses to be ready for the Yonkers qualifier and earn the bid to the state tournament.

Success in the states could make the team eligible for the 2020 FIRST Championship in April.

“The students came in and wanted to win,” Stolt said. “They were very motivated to win and they came out on top. All the hard work and the time they put into it is what made them so successful to advance to the next level and hopefully they will be successful there.”

Sheila has seven motors in total with wheels that operate independently to make it move in all directions. A foldable arm springs up with a claw to grab items during the competition.

“This year’s been pretty cool helping the kids who have just joined the team, having them help us build the robot, being able to code the robot with us,” said senior Jordan De Sotle, the team’s captain and head coder. “It’s an amazing feeling when all your hard work pays off in one moment. I’m very excited and I know our team is very excited to be able to go to states and have this opportunity.”

De Sotle, who is planning to major in computer science and cybersecurity at either Norwich University or Rochester Institute of Technology, attributes his team’s success to the work ethic of the team. He said: “It was all the hard work we put into the season that really helped advance us to this point.”