Schools

Short Hills Robotics Teams Participate in NJ LEGO League Finals

Hartshorn and Deerfield schools were 2 of the 60 teams that competed to advance to nationals.

Two teams from Short Hills advanced to the NJ State First LEGO League Regional Finals held on Saturday in Mount Olive Township.  

Led by parent coaches Zhong Li, Michael Recce, Dina Pearl, Rob Wolf, Neetu Salhotra and Yan Kong, students from Hartshorn Elementary School and Deerfield Elementary Schools were 2 of the 60 teams that competed to advance to the nationals. 

The Hartshorn i-Robots team comprising of fifth graders Brendan Near and Jake Updyke, fourth graders Dhruv Kapur, Shiangtian (TT) Li, Brandon Recce, Burke Seeger, and Elysee Wolf, and third grader Simon Pearl, and MonsterBots team comprising of Deerfield fifth graders Sheen Patel, William Qin and Sachin Sahay, fourth graders Sophia Klymchuk and Ishaan Salhotra, and third grader Andrew Overdeck were one of the youngest teams in the NJ regionals.

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This year's theme was "Nature's Fury." The teams were judged on their project presentation, core values, robot design and robot game for which robots had to tackle models of natural disaster aftermath. Though neither of the teams advanced to the World Festival, they should be commended for the hard work they had done in the past several months to get to the State Finals. Said Li, "We were in the big league for the NJ tournament so our energy, preparation, and teamwork needed to be up a notch. It was a great experience for all, and we are looking forward to next year." 

“A highly competitive event such as this has its stressful and high pressure moments, but the kids did a remarkable job of staying calm and keeping their spirits high," said Neetu Salhotra. "All in all, it was a great competitive season for the rookie teams.”

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Founded over 20 years ago by Segway inventor Dean Kamen, FIRST LEGO League is a not-for-profit robotics program for 9- to 14-year-olds, designed to get children excited about science and technology and to teach them valuable employment and life skills. FLL’s partners host official FLL tournaments annually around the world, attended last year by over 180,000 participants.  More information can be found at http://firstlegoleague.org/.


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