The CouGears, Yeshivat Frisch’s FTC (First Tech Challenge) Robotics team, is proud to have earned a spot in the NJ State Championship this June, after ranking 11th out of almost 40 teams in the Northern Leagues regional championship held virtually on April 22. There, the team earned a second place award in the Control Award category, which recognizes excellence in coding. The team put together an informative five-minute presentation for the judges and answered a variety of questions in a series of panel interviews over the course of several days.
Only about 30 teams out of several hundred in New Jersey make the state tournament each year. “We are certainly a David among Goliaths, as we are going up against teams that meet for many more hours than we have available with our dual curriculum,” said the team’s faculty coach, Travis Merritt. “I could not be more proud of the work that these students have accomplished.”
Abi Langer ’21 and Eliana Bane ’22 served as senior and junior captains, respectively, guiding and motivating the team through many challenging moments. “After months of hard work and long hours, our little robot, The Shot, successfully accomplished its goal of intaking orange foam disks and spewing them out into a 3ft high goal,” said Langer. “I couldn’t contain my excitement at our whopping point average across 6 matches of 142.2 points. In September, the robot was nothing more than an idea and a jumble of metal and plastic parts, but after many designs and redesigns and re-redesigns our little Shotty did it and we could not be more proud.”
Over the course of the year, the team adapted to an ever changing set of circumstances but persevered through it all to produce a highly effective and reliable robot. To practice, the CouGears worked on their robot in many different locations within Frisch, and took their field apart and put it back together more times than they could count. The robot is now ready for its fourth iteration as Team #15762 prepares for Frisch’s first state tournament in school history.
The team extended their thanks to Dr. Shawn Langer, Frisch Engineering Program Director Rifkie Silverman and The Gottesman Fund for their critical contributions to the program.
In addition to Langer and Bane, the CouGears FTC team includes Jonathan Katz (programming captain), Ilan Davidovsky (mechanical captain), Eytan Abramowitz (driver and doc specialist), Isaac Badner, Isabelle Bersson, Aaron Goldgewert, Oran Goodman, Joshua Kaplan, Nate Mohl, Jude Shankman, Eitan Traurig and Eitan Weinberg.