Twenty-four FIRST^® Tech Challenge Long Island teams will take to the playing field at the Long Island Championship Tournament to be held at Smithtown High School West on Saturday, February 11. The competing teams were determined through a series of three Qualifying Tournaments that were presented by School-Business Partnerships of Long Island, Inc. (SBPLI) throughout the month of January.

During each event teams, comprised of students age 12 to 18 demonstrate their problem-solving skills, creative thinking, teamwork, competitive play, sportsmanship and sense of community. Working alongside their mentors, these students built and programmed robots for the 2017 FIRST Tech Challenge, VELOCITY VORTEX^SM, during which two alliances of three teams attempt to score as many points as possible by moving particles into their own center vortex or corner vortex and claiming beacons for their alliance by triggering them to illuminate their alliance color. At the end of the game, the color of the beacon determines the alliance credited for the successful claiming of the beacon.

More than 46,000 students in almost 20 countries have programmed robots to compete on a 12-foot by 12-foot field in an alliance format against other teams. Robots are built from a reusable platform, powered by Android technology and programmed using Java.

Three winning teams from the Long Island Championship will have the opportunity to advance to the FIRST Tech Challenge Super-Regional Championship on March 17-19, 2017 at the University of Scranton in Scranton, PA., and may then advance to the FIRST Tech Challenge World Championship at the America's Center Dome in St. Louis on April 26-29, 2017.

Awards are presented at each FIRST Tech Challenge event include:

• Inspire Award: team that best exemplifies the spirit of FIRST Tech Challenge
• Think Award: team that best manages the engineering design process
• Connect Award: team most connected to the local and engineering communities
• Rockwell Collins Innovate Award: team with the most ingenuity and inventiveness
• PTC^® Design Award: team with the most compelling industrial design elements
• Motivate Award: team acts as Ambassadors for FIRST; exemplifies outstanding outreach/recruitment efforts
• Control Award: team that uses sensors and software to enhance the robot’s functionality on the field
• Winning Alliance Award: alliance that wins the final elimination rounds
• Finalist Alliance Award: alliance in the final match of the competition

“FIRST Long Island, presented by SBPLI, Inc., is very pleased to work in partnership with each of the high schools that hosted a FIRST Tech Challenge event this season,” says Bertram Dittmar, Executive Director, SBPLI. “We look forward to seeing the students display their abilities and their Gracious Professionalism during this, the final FIRST Tech Challenge tournament on Long Island in 2017.”

The following teams have advanced to the Long Island FIRST Tech Challenge Championships

Local sponsors included School-Business Partnerships of Long Island, Inc. and Smithtown Central School District; national sponsors included Qualcomm, Rockwell Collins and PTC.