Mechanical Mules move on to nationals

Malverne High School’s robotics team, the Mechanical Mules, competed with 49 other schools at the SPBLI Long Island First Robotics Regional Competition on March 29.

All the schools that faced off in the regional competition only had six weeks to build a robot that could play this year’s robotics game, “Aerial Assist.” For the game, the teams were required to work with other robots to throw large exercise balls into high and low goals, gaining points each time they passed the ball to another robot on their alliance.

Heading to the quarterfinals, the Mules were ranked ninth and became captain of their alliance with Team 329 from Patchogue Medford High School and Team 1156 from Brazil. In working together, the three schools qualified for the final round. In order to win the regional competition, the alliance needed to win best out of three rounds. The Mules and the rest of the Blue Alliance took a devastating loss in the first round with a final score of 88-63, but came back fighting in the second round to win 150-110. The Blue Alliance battled to the very end with a final score of 102-93, in their favor.

For the first time ever, Malverne’s robotics team won the regional championship. The Mechanical Mules can now move forward to compete at the national level in St. Louis from April 24 to 26 with schools from around the world.