FIRST® (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Long Island presented its 2025 Long Island Regional on March 21-22 at Hofstra University’s David S. Mack Sports and Exhibition Complex in Hempstead. Forty-nine teams from Long Island, New York City, and India took part in the four-day FIRST® Robotics Competition. This event culminated with awards and honors for areas such as design excellence, competitive play, sportsmanship and high-impact partnerships among schools, businesses and communities.
The winner of the 2025 Long Island Regional was the three-team alliance made up of “Kingsmen Robotics” (Team #3736) from Kings Park High School, “POBots” (Team #353) from Plainview-Old Bethpage/JFK High School and “Longwood RoboLions” (Team #564) from Longwood High School. “Longwood RoboLions” (Team #564) from Longwood High School in Middle Island took home the coveted FIRST Impact Award, which is the event’s most prestigious award. It recognizes the team that best embodies the goals and purpose of FIRST and that best represents a model for other teams to emulate. “Mineola Wild Reds” (Team #6806) from Mineola High School won the Regional Engineering Inspiration Award. These teams are now eligible to compete at the 2025 FIRST Championship presented by BAE Systems at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas, from April 16-19.
Ashwin Shah, Team Mentor, Team #9692 “Sigma Powered By Adipro” from Mumbai, India, was named a Finalist for the Woodie Flowers Award. Winners of the Dean’s List Finalist Award were Matthew L of Team #810 “The Mechanical Bulls” from Smithtown High School and Igor D of Team #6806 “Mineola Wild Reds” from Mineola High School.
“This was one of the best Long Island Regionals we’ve experienced,” FIRST Long Island Executive Director Bertram Dittmar said. “All participating teams demonstrated tremendous teamwork, gracious professionalism™ and critical thinking. The fun and excitement of the competition was evident as many students and mentors got caught up in the spirit of the event. Participants, volunteers, and sponsors had the opportunity to experience the beauty of engineering and technology combined with the excitement of a competitive event.”
As a FIRST Robotics Competition, the Long Island Regional featured teams of high school-aged students from across Long Island, the New York metropolitan area and even around the world competing in a cooperative tournament-style robotics competition. Guided by their mentors, students rely on their skills in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) to compete for honors and recognition that reward design excellence, competitive play and sportsmanship. This high-energy event further emphasizes the importance of high-impact partnerships between students, universities, businesses, and communities.
This year’s competition was dubbed REEFSCAPE(SM) presented by Haas, in which two competing alliances are invited to score coral, harvest algae, and attach to the barge before time runs out. Alliances earn additional rewards for meeting specific scoring thresholds and for cooperating with their opponents. Human players provide the game pieces to the robots from the substations. In the last moments of each match, alliance robots race to dock or engage with their charge station.
The Full List of Winners of the 2025 SBPLI Long Island Regional Awards can be found here.