FIRST Robotics Tournament

LI Regional FIRST Robotics Competition, a national program that challenges teams of high school students to build a robot to perform specific tasks based on an annual theme took place from March 31st -April 2nd at Hofstra University. This year’s theme, Stronghold, was based on a popular medieval castle-conquering and battle-strategy game in which robots gain points by incapacitating defenses and scoring boulders through goals in the opposition’s tower. Fifty Long Island high school teams and one international team, comprised of more than 1,200 students participated in the event. The competition was open to the public and attended by friends, families, teachers and community members interested in robotics and the students’ efforts. Optimum Community was a sponsor of the competition and more than 30 Cablevision volunteers were on hand to help ensure that things ran smoothly.