Falcon robotics finish strong

After an intense two-day contest, the Albany High School Robotics Team emerged Wednesday as a runner-up in the 2022 New York Tech Valley FIRST Regional Robotics Competition held at the MVP Arena in downtown Albany.

FIRST Robotics competitions are the premier engineering challenge for high school students. Teams from around the world, working closely with teachers and volunteer mentors, have six weeks to design, build, program, modify and test a robot to participate in a competition that changes each year.

Superintendent Kaweeda Adams joined members of Albany High Team 1493 when they celebrated the launch of the 2022 contest virtually in January and caught up in person Tuesday at the start of the competition.

Albany High was among 41 teams competing this year, with teams coming from all over the Capital Region, from New York and other states, and from other countries.

After the preliminary rounds, the Falcons had the highest score among all competitors heading into Wednesday’s finals.

For the finals, the leading teams pick a group of partners. Albany High’s alliance included Tech Valley High School and Spencerport High School from the Rochester area.

In the best-two-out-of-three championship round, they matched up against an alliance that included schools from Indiana, West Virginia and Flushing, New York.

The teams split the first two finals matches, and Team 1493 fought hard up until the last second of the deciding match.

Congratulations on a fantastic performance to the 30 students on Team 1493 (see below); and to teacher-advisers Kevin Allen, Brent Cady, Andre Castagna, Rich Kissane and Alan Landman; mentor Jake Ennis from National Grid; and, of course, Rein the robot.

Team members include:

Nadav Asal • Seven Brandt • Ben Conti • Brodey Flynn • Portia Gaa • Makki Gally • Zvi Gomez • Gavin Hammer • Thor Hammer, president • Pyae Sone Hmine • Endri Hoxha • Jacob Levine • Sophia Lucarelli, treasurer • Nathan Martel • Alpha Mathai • Trent Minarich • Kevin McLeod • Nishath Nabila • Zeroun Ni, vice president • Alison Powell • Jena Maria Rubi • Owen Sears • Zane Sears • Saugat Shah • Jackson Shahinfar • Cole Solomon • Sydney Speanburg • Dorothy Sperry • Cross Vargas • Nolan Wolfgang

You can see Facebook photo albums of Tuesday's matches, Wednesday morning's matches and Wednesday afternoon's finals. (You don't need a Facebook account to see the photos linked in the highlighted text above. A window may appear that says, "To see more from Albany City Schools on Facebook, log on or create an account,” but you can dismiss it by clicking “not now.”)