2015 SBPLI Long Island Regional

The 2015 SBPLI Long Island Regional is approaching fast, with 51 teams attending - including international contenders from Brazil, Canada, and Israel.
(By the way - if any international teams are in need of batteries, Team 2601 will be happy to provide at the event.)

28 Pierson Whalers
263 Sachem Aftershock
271 Mechanical Marauders
287 Floyd
296 Northern Knights
329 Raiders
334 TechKnights
352 The Green Machine
353 POBots
358 Robotic Eagles
496 Royals
514 Miller Place Robotics
527 Red Dragons
545 ROBO-DAWGS
564 Longwood Robotics
569 Rambots
601 BayBots
870 TEAM R. I. C. E.
871 Robotechs
884 Mechanical Mules
1156 Under Control
1468 Hicksville J-Birds
1537 Robotic Knights
1554 Oceanside Sailors
1601 QS1601
1690 Orbit
1751 The Warriors
1796 RoboTigers
1803 Vikings
2027 Rayout
2161 Robocats
2347 Metal Mercs
2487 Mechanical Animals
2601 Steel Hawks
2638 Rebels
2869 Regal Eagles
2872 CyberCats
2875 CyberHawks
3137 T-Birds
3171 P.R.I.D.E
3460 Brentwood Indians
3624 ThunderColts
3950 Robo Gym
4006 CIBorgs
4122 Ossining O-Bots
4458 Infernobotix
4567 The Phi- Kings
5016 Huntington Robotics
5099 Cyberian Tigers
5659 Team Supreme
5736 Kingsmen

I started a thread a few days ago but it just turned into a convo between me and a mentor for 1796. I’m excited. If you want to talk strategy I’m the driver. I talked to you guys a bit at NYC.

I don’t think I got to speak with you personally, but glad to hear that.

Our robot has undergone some significant changes to acquire recycling containers faster and intake from both the human player/landfill. I’m eager to see what other teams from the NYC Regional (271, 334, 358, 514, 1468, 1796, 3171, 4122) are going to debut.

I also can’t wait to see everyone’s upgraded bots this weekend, it’s going to be one heck of a competition!

Also I can confirm that we’ll def have some upgrades of our own, you know like actually being able to pick up a tote :stuck_out_tongue: ( or so we hope lol )

We are going to be struggling in the first hour or 2 to finish our robot fixes. We have to sawzal some stuff. Dremmel some other stuff and switch out the cable

I expect it to be a very interesting Regional.

Many of the teams competing have attended at least 1 event already and will be making modifications to their machines based on what they’ve learned.

Game strategies have been honed from the prior 4 weeks of events so those that have paid attention should be fun to watch.

A notable international contingent in attendance. The NYC Regional had some nice robots that arrived from abroad. I expect SBPLI will be the same.

Looking over the team list there is a broad range of experience levels present and THAT is always interesting to watch!!

First Team 3171 Team P.R.I.D.E. would like to thank our amazing alliance partners team 3950 ROBO GYM and 3137 the T-Birds on helping us achieve an incredible SBPLI Regional victory. We would like to congratulate teams 1690, 263, 329, 1156, 1796, and 358 on having incredible robots and being very friendly and gracious teams. We would like to thank teams 870, 1796, 564, 358 for their support and friendship. Two years ago a group of seniors lead our team to its first regional victory. All of these seniors have returned to mentor because they understand how important FIRST is. We earned this blue banner for them, our mentors, and ourselves.
Finals Match 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm1ddP-fLm0

Congratz guys your design is amazing, it’s innovative and we’ll designed, can’t wait for next year but for now have fun at camps.

It was great having such close pits. Can’t wait to see you guys again next season. :slight_smile:

2601 was honored to earn the Gracious Professionalism Award, and be allianced with 5099, 4458, and 2638 through Quarterfinals.

Thanks to everybody who made our first experience at SBPLI a fantastic one!

This event seems to have evolved into a popular Regional to attend for many teams. It has also evolved into on of the more competitive ones as well. I know that the folks at SBPLI have been working VERY hard behind the scenes for quite a few years to make this happen.

I was pleasantly surprised and humbled on Thursday when team 1156, Under Control from Brazil told me that they consider this to be their “home” Regional. They went on to win the Chairman’s Award on Saturday so their statement was well in advance of that occurrence.

3 teams from outside the US - Brazil, Canada and Israel brought a nice International flavor to the Regional. It’s always great to see teams who want to come here to compete and to get their perspective on things.

The term I heard most from all the teams over the course of the Competition was the fact that this Regional had a “comfortable” and traditional Regional feel to it. Over the course of the Regional every team I spoke with mentioned the family atmosphere and the fact that all the teams and volunteers went out of their way to help each other.

Some of the teams from both the US and abroad were pleasantly surprised by this. We look forward to seeing them return in the future along with others.

We will hopefully be able to attend next year. Its cheaper for us to go to NYC and sbpli is the same weekend as the show so we lose a lot of members. The real thing I was impressed with was the fact that they managed 10x10 pits this year.

Not only that but they re-arranged it so that up to 54 teams can be accommodated in the future if needed. :wink:

SBPLI is the first event to need to use tote points as a tie breaker for ranking.

The entire crew at SBPLI were wonderful to us over the weekend, it was one of the best organized and most friendly regionals I’ve been to in 13 years.
Congrats to Deb Winter and her team!

One other interesting thing that occurred during the Long Island Regional was having Conner O’Malley of the Late Night with Seth Meyers show taping a segment related to Robots taking over the world or something to that effect.

He came out on the field prior to the start of a match. Unannounced and dressed up as a bright silver “robot” he addressed the crowd with a rant about robots taking over the world, human sublimation and other things along that line. Part of his intention was to get the crowd to ‘boo’ him. At one point he was asking the crowd to “Boo me!”.

What I found interesting was that while everyone in the stands looked somewhat puzzled and curious, no one actually booed.

Both he and his director were surprised and we later explained to them that this was not that type of crowd. They ended up later on in the day taping a couple of the teams grouped in the stands doing various “crowd reaction” segments.

They also went around to a couple of teams and interviewed the teams robots. Yes that’s correct, not the team members, the robots…

I believe it’s supposed to air sometime in the next week or so a segment of the show. It should be interesting to see what they do with it.

Is that what that was? I saw him filming by one of the restrooms and was a bit confused

He interviewed me and my robot and let me tell you it was interesting after his several pre civil war racist jokes (they were awful) he went to calling me a little Jewish boy slave robot owner. It really caught me off guard. Not to mention the fact that me being a video person was wondering how they got their follow focus to get so smooth. I don’t know if I’ll make the cut being I probably looked so confused and red after his little joke but whatever I managed to get an optimum news crew to come and 3137 got news 12 so I’ll stick to being on more pg things.

Late Night with Seth Meyers
http://www.nbc.com/late-night-with-seth-meyers/video/robot-competition/2857629