The FIRST Impact Award (formerly Chairman’s Award) is the most prestigious award at FIRST, it honors the team that best represents a model for other teams to emulate and best embodies the mission of FIRST. It was created to keep the central focus of FIRST Robotics Competition on the ultimate goal of transforming the culture in ways that will inspire greater levels of respect and honor for science and technology, as well as encouraging more of today’s youth to become science and technology leaders.
FIRST FRC Team 564 is Incredibly Proud and Honored to say that we are the 2025 FIRST Long Island Regional Impact Award Winners!!!!
2025 Impact Video
The Team 564 Impact
Unified Robotics
About 2 years ago, Team 564 was presented with a question. Our Unified Basketball team had a student who due to some physical limitations could not score a basket. He was the coach, and could not play on the court with his teammates. Our team jumped into action. We created and built a robot that would allow this athlete to use a video game controller to score a basket from the free-throw line. And with that player-coach became the player that scored the opening basket. For his last 2 seasons of high school, this student athlete was able to use our robot to score a basket.
This has inspired us to create a first in New York Unified Robotics. Beginning in Fall of 2025 our team will lead in an effort to combine our Robotics Team with neurodivergent students in an effort to teach STEAM, robotics and live out the Longwood School Motto of “Everyone Every Day”.
K-3 Curriculum
Due to work from our Robotics team we presently have FIRST Curriculum integrated directly into our Kindergarten to third grade classrooms. This year in grades K-3 over 2500 students will take part in STEAM Education from FIRST.
All Levels of FIRST
Here at Longwood We presently offer all levels of FIRST Competition Teams. Our program offers FIRST Lego Discovery, FIRST Lego League, First Tech Challenge and First Robotics Competition. We currently Host 10 FLL Lego Discovery, 3 FLL, 1 FTC and 1 FRC Team. That is over 200 Students competing on FIRST competition teams this past year.
Getting the Word of STEAM out there
This past year we have completely rebuilt our Social Media Presence via YouTube, Instagram, Podcast and major website updates. We have been able to use this social media precence to reach 20,000+ people around the world with an average of over 70,000+ views in the last 30 days. This allows for the RoboLions to get the word out about the importance of STEAM.
Additionally, we have been able to advocate with our New York State Government for the advancement of bills in the Assembly and Senate which will help to fund robotics programs for Tier 1 Schools. We recently attending the NYS Capitol and Assembly Member Jen Lunsford’s STEAM Day to advocate for Assembly bill a6066 and Senate bill s379.
In 2024 we became the first team in the world to receive individual sponsorship from the United States Navy. We partnered with a Naval Recruitment group working to bring into our Navy the next generation of Electrical and Nuclear Submarine Engineers. The Impact of this partnership can be found in the quote below from Petty Officer D. Walter. “Most events I go to for recruiting, one out of every thousand people qualify for our programs, here one out of every thousand isn’t!” We continue today to partner with the Navy in our Mission to spread STEAM.
Future Curriculum
With our school district currently undergoing construction as a part of a major Bond we passed last year, Team 564 will be making strides with regard to brining Industry Standard Education into the classroom and to our students and community. We are working on the creation of a state of the art manufacturing and engineering lab that will bring CNC, CAD and Robotics education to our students during the school day.
This space will also allow all of our students to become certified HAAS Mill Operators and HAAS Lathe Operators. We will be brining production level HAAS CNC machines along with CoBots into our lab. These will become a vital part of our robot design process and help us continue to maintain industry standard practices with our students.
Our Family Impact
The RoboLions are a family. One of the best parts about our team is the diversity of interest and skill set. Our team consists of athletes, artists, Musicians, actors, world travelers and many more. Together we bring unique skills to form one family, the RoboLions.
