Robotic Adventures at the FIRST Competition

Fred Armisen looking geek-chic in hoodie and black glasses:  Paul Gleason

Ben Wasser's RoboWarriors and The Harlem Knights face Stuyvesant. Simon Strauss disagrees with the notion that the Knights lucked into their high seed. He says they're good every year, top eight this year certainly, though maybe not third. (He admits that Bronx Science would have turned them down, too.) In the first game, Stuyvesant's alliance beats them by sixty points. Afterward, the RoboWarriors tip the Knights' robot up on its side, trying to fix the loose chains that are making it sluggish. Wasser says he'll be back next year, but as a volunteer. He seems resigned to losing one last time, and they do.

In a break between two quarter-final matches, there's an odd interlude when the lights dim and a clip of Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update" appears on the big screen. Fred Armisen, current cast member of SNL and former member of the Blue Man Group, walks onto the field. He calls everyone geniuses and riffs on nerdiness. He himself was a nerd, he says, and to prove it he'll try to shoot a moon rock into a trailer. He says he'll miss. He does. Then he's gone.

Saunders and Bronx Science win their first quarter-final game but drop the second when the latter's dumping mechanism malfunctions. A timeout is called, and they whisk their robot off the field. With only a few minutes to figure out what's wrong (and fix it), the students crouch down around the robot, pointing and yelling. A golden-shirted referee tells them to hurry up: being late after a timeout means forfeiture. The problem, they realize, is a folded cable. It's cutting off electricity to an important motor, in the same way that a folded garden hose cuts off water. The SciBorgs return to the field just in time. Their robot works, and their alliance wins narrowly, 54-48.

The qualifying matches often looked like free-for-alls, but, in the semi-finals, clear strategies emerge. The third robot on the Bronx Science-Saunders alliance, the M.E.T.A.L. Knights, looks like little more than a clear plastic box on wheels but proves indispensable against their next opponent, Stuyvesant. The first game is tied until, with a minute remaining, the M.E.T.A.L. Knights pin Stuyvesant against a wall. Stuyvesant's red-eyed hopper is nearly overflowing with moon rocks, but M.E.T.A.L. never gives them a chance to find a target. One of Saunders's mentors confirms that their strategy is to neutralize Stuyvesant. Their robot attacks well but, he says, isn't particularly strong. In the second game, while the SciBorgs collect loose moon rocks in a corner, Stuyvesant bears down on them. The SciBorg's robot suddenly turns and jets away, barely escaping a cascade of moon rocks that now fall harmlessly over the side of the field. The M.E.T.A.L. Knights scoot in behind, and Stuyvesant finishes the match trapped against the wall. The alliance from Yonkers and the Bronx (the Knights are from the latter's Evander Child's Campus and High School of Computers and Technology) advances to the finals, 60-40.

In the first round of the other semi-final, the Robotic Plague stalls in its starting corner. Meanwhile, Bound Brook's robot Robbe, a big red and gray box with a New Jersey license plate and its name in scrolling lights across its back, tears around the field. It easily out-muscles Team Overdrive, and its alliance wins by about 50 points. The second game is closer. The Robotic Plague and Team Overdrive hold a slight lead for the entire match. As time winds down, all three pairs of robots are stuck against the walls. The pinned can't escape, and the pinning can't move without letting them. It looks like the Robotic Plague and Team Overdrive are going to force a third game by running out the clock until a robot on Bound Brook's alliance slips free, pounces on the robot pinning Robbe, and drops the winning moon rocks right as time expires. Overdrive's Kenny Shotyk says miscommunication cost their alliance the first game. As for the second, he shrugs. Tom Moser shouts encouragement; they're still going to the national championship in Atlanta, he reminds the team.

The championship round, then, pits Bronx Science, the Saunders Droid Factory, and the M.E.T.A.L. Knights against Bound Brook and its allies, from Allentown, NJ, and Long Island City, NY. From the start, it's apparent that M.E.T.A.L.'s pinning strategy won't work against Bound Brook. Robbe is simply too strong, and shrugs off attempts to trap it. Even so, Robbe's alliance wins by only a single moon rock. In the second game, Saunders' alliance decides to shift their tactics. They'll avoid Robbe and focus on the robot from Allentown instead, but their robots look lost and uncoordinated during the match. Robbe's alliance wins again, clinching the title.

Saunders finds consolation at the award ceremony, though, when they're announced as the winners of the Chairman's Award. They stream down from the stands. Some of the students are in tears. One of the mentors, too.

The robot from Allentown, New Jersey:  Paul Gleason