2 minute read
Robotics Team Turns Competition into Camaraderie
By Jillian Risberg
For Those Guys, the local Long Valley Robotics Team; Jeffrey Jiang, Bailor Tumminelli, Tyler Kometani, Jack Sciortino, Rameen Iftikhar and Gabby Flynn — participating in FIRST is not just a passion but a way of life.
“It’s a cool community, uplifting; Gracious Professionalism is part of the ethos of FIRST that encourages high-quality work, emphasizes the value of others and respects individuals,” says Tyler Kometani.
They are all students at West Morris Central except for Iftikhar, who attends Denville’s Morris County School of Technology. And Team 10096 are the best of friends.
According to Jeffrey Jiang, being at the forefront of robotics and this type of technology early on makes a real difference.
The FIRST program makes an impact.
“It provides an opportunity to showcase your STEM abilities that you can’t do in school,” Jiang says. “Helps with the college admissions process — to have more experience when we look for a job.”
Rameen Iftikhar knew she had an interest in STEM and getting involved with FIRST allowed her a firsthand look and to meet new people.
“I was able to go to these competitions and expand my creativity when it comes to creating our robot. It also helped me adapt to different situations. It’s exciting,” the 17-yearold says it inspired her to join the organization.
Another way Iftikhar says she could connect the next generation with STEM is as a competition judge, and girls in STEM (another branch of FTC) have monthly STEM girls meetings.
“I think I’m breaking barriers because when I joined FIRST
I was the only girl on the robotics team. Even when I went to competitions, there weren’t many girls in FTC,” says Iftikhar. “As I progressed I saw more girls join and when I went to our summer boot camps young girls came up to me and felt like they could do this as well.”
Although the team is a little smaller and their robot may not always look the best, Kometani says it always performs well and catches people off guard. “It’s interesting to see how people react.”
The most rewarding part of this journey, according to Jack Sciortino, is it coming together — and playing out.
“The hard work we put into it and at the competitions scored pretty high on the leaderboard,” says Kometani. “We’re proud of that and it’s fulfilling (to think) we built this good robot, saw everything come together and had good results from it.”
That’s even after overcoming obstacles, he says, including the robot breaking in the middle of competitions.
“During outreach we’ve had the robot break,” the 17-year-old says. “It’s fixing the robot as quickly as we can. And (handling) being on our feet all the time and ready.”
And Jiang says the lift breaks a lot — it’s pretty complicated.
“There’s a string and it lifts up this apparatus that can grab the cones,” he says they spend so much time on it; it’s a passion.
Kometani says at the beginning of each season they sketch what they want to do and all happen to have the same vision.
“We wanted something to lift it up. We decided to use a pulley because it was the quickest, and cheaper compared to other options,” the 17-year-old says their decision came down to the efficiency and how easy it was to put together.
“It ended up working the best.”
This year they ended up building the drivetrain with mecanum wheels, sizing it so it would be smaller and it was a unique design, according to Kometani.
A lot goes into building and conceptualizing this.
The team says they meet two or three times a week,
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