Bay Ridge

Xaverian robotics teams come up big in FIRST competition

March 25, 2016 Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Junior John Paul Cashman puts his talent on display in the robotics competition. Photo courtesy of Xaverian High School
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Xaverian High School had a strong showing in the New York City FIRST Competition and Expo, a citywide contest for robotics teams.

FIRST is a trademarked term that means For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.

One team, the Genesis Oscars, won a trophy for first place in the Research category. Genesis is a middle school within Xaverian High School.

The competition took place at the Jacobs Javits Center March 11-13.

There were several contests within the three-day competition, including FIRST Robotics, FIRST Tech Challenge and FIRST LEGO League.

In the FIRST LEGO League, the school’s Genesis Incinerators won third place in Strategy & Innovation thanks to their crab drive robot with four wheel turning ability.

In the FIRST Robotics competition, Xaverian’s Brooklyn Blacksmiths had breakthroughs in several aspects of the game, according to school officials.

The first 15 seconds of every match featured robots moving autonomously with no human driver control. After eight qualifying matches, the Blacksmiths had the highest combined autonomous score out of all 66 robots in the competition.

The Blacksmiths made it as far as the semifinals, which is the farthest the team has ever gone in a regional tournament.

Xaverian won the an Industrial Safety Award, marking the first time that a team has repeated winning the Safety Award in the 12 years it has been awarded at the NYC FIRST competition.

“Our celebrated accomplishments this year are part of a process. We’ve been getting better every year for several years, and that makes the past, the present and the future so thrilling,” moderator James Schreiner said in a statement. “I appreciate the learning experiences that my students lived during the NYC Regional this year even more than I appreciate the milestones we reached.”

Xaverian is a Catholic high school for boys located at 7100 Shore Road in Bay Ridge. Genesis, within Xaverian, is a co-ed middle school.  

 

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