The Village Beacon Record - June 16, 2016

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BEACON

RECORD

MOUNT SINAI • MILLER PLACE • SOUND BEACH • ROCKY POINT • SHOREHAM • WADING RIVER

Vol. 31, No. 47

June 16, 2016

$1.00

Meet the candidate Mount Sinai’s Dave Calone is running for congress

A5

I love you, Dad also: ‘To Spy or Not to Spy’ in Setauket; Make your Mark at Gallery North; SBU Sports

B1

Photo from Chris Pinkenburg

The GearHeadz robotics team displays its national trophy at Legoland in California.

Rocky Point robotics team rocks national stage GearHeadz bring home two awards from California By DeSirée KeeGaN What started with a small group of kids in a Long Island basement ended with cheers when the Rocky Point-area GearHeadz robotics team ran down the isle at Legoland in California to collect a national trophy. “It was the greatest feeling ever,” GearHeadz coach Chris Pinkenburg said of how well his team produced on such a grand stage, to receive a fifth-place robot game and secondplace programming award. “I’m

extremely proud of them. They’re a very independent, unselfish team that can figure out a lot of problems on their own.” The team competed in the FIRST LEGO League Long Island championship tournament back in February and was crowned second-place champion. From there, it competed on the national stage against 74 teams, including regional and state champions from the United States and Canada, as well as international guests from Ger-

many and South Korea. Each year, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, which was founded in 1989, presents a theme under which teams solve real-world problems and build and program a robot to compete in missions. The theme this time around was Trash Trek, so students had to present a project that could be the solution to an environmental hazard. The GearHeadz tried over 20 times and eventually came up with the right recipe for biodegradable bags that would limit the mass death of sea turtles and other marine life

Finding the Perfect

from accidental ingestion of plastic. “We’ve worked together well as a team,” said Pinkenburg’s 14-yearold son Jade. “We’ve solved a lot of problems and succeeded on the Long Island and national stage.” Speaking of problems, his team ran into a big one at nationals. “The first two rounds went really, really bad,” Chris Pinkenburg said. “We got back from the second round and sat down together to try to figure out what’s wrong with our robot. It behaved very differently from previous times.” Recently turned 14-year-old Jen

GEARHEADZ continued on page A10

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