The Floral Park Brick Heads Team #3181, an extracurricular robotics program of the Floral Park Bellerose School District, was honored by Mayor Thomas Tweedy and the Board of Trustees at the village meeting on June 17. The team of 10 students in grades 5 through 8 competed in the FIRST Lego League (FLL) competition.
The 2013-14 season was a remarkable one for the Brick Heads. They competed against 110 teams from throughout Long Island. On March 2, they brought home three trophies from the Long Island FLL Championship Tournament. The team’s awards included Robot Performance, Judges Award and, in collaboration with Carle Place Middle School, the Alliance Award.
The team also took home first place (robot performance) and second place (gracious professionalism) trophies at the Long Island FLL Practice Tournament and first place (robot performance) and second place overall champion at the FLL Long Island Sunday Qualifier. All three tournaments were sponsored by School-Business Partnerships of Long Island, Inc.
The team was selected to represent Long Island at the Canadian First Lego League (FFL) International Open in Toronto, Ontario. The tournament sponsored jointly by FIRST Robotics Canada and the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, brought together 72 of the top FLL teams, representing 21 countries, from throughout the world.
In Toronto, the team received a second place trophy for Project Research. The award recognizes a team that utilizes diverse resources to formulate an in-depth and comprehensive understanding of the problem they have identified. The students’ robot achieved a score of 501 and placed 14th in the robot game.
FIRST is a non-profit organization, founded by Dean Kamen, Segway inventor, to encourage youth to consider careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). There are over 20,000 FLL teams worldwide in over 70 different countries.
— Submitted by the Floral Park-Bellerose School
