NYC kids return to robotics tournament for first time in three years after COVID-19 cancellations

Only a handful of the 49 teams participating in this weekend’s NYC FIRST student robotics tournament will advance to the national finals later this spring in Houston — but for the hundreds of teens gathering Saturday at The Armory in Washington Heights, just getting to compete in person is a victory.

The tournament — which asks teams from across the city and region to design a new robot each year to compete in a game designed by organizers — has been canceled the past two years because of COVID-19.

For students like 17-year-old Salwa Omar, a senior and member of the robotics team at John Dewey High School in Brooklyn, returning to competition means resuming her favorite activity.

“I just have so much passion for it,” said Omar. “During quarantine I was missing it. It makes me feel productive, like I have a purpose.”

This year’s competition involves getting a robot to shoot fuzzy balls through hoops of varying heights and get them to climb through a maze of bars.

Omar, who competed at the last NYC FIRST competition in 2019 when she was just a freshman, said returning to robotics this year has been joyful but challenging. She had to brush up on her skills while showing the ropes to the freshmen, sophomores and juniors who’d never competed before.

“It’s been a little bit rough but we were working hard,” she said. “We stay in school until 8 p.m… go to school on Saturdays and Sundays.”

For Omar, the best part of the robotics competition is “being creative, solving problems… it really stimulates your brain. Being way from that for two years was really hard.”

NYC FIRST executive director Michael Zigman said robotics competitions provide many of the same benefits as team sports.

“It’s being part of a team. In this case it’s like a sports team but it’s like a sport for the mind. That coming together as a team is doubly better this year because it’s been taken away from them for so long,” he said.

As an added benefit, kids are learning “engineering, math, physics, but in a way that is joyful, fun engaging and inspiring,” Zigman said. That’s one reason why his organization works to expand robotics to more city schools.

Between four and six of the top-performing teams at this weekend’s competition will advance to the international tournament in Houston later this month.

“It’s not about how the robot performs on the field,” said Zigman. “It’s the experience you get as a young person going through this.”