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Five Harvey Upper School robotics teams demonstrated their skill and expertise in the VEX V5RC High Stakes Fallsburg State Qualifying Tournament, earning The Harvey School distinction as Tournament Champions, Skills Champion, the Excellence Award, and the Innovate Award. Held at Fallsburg High School Jan. 18, the tournament hosted a field of 30 robots from the Southern New York Region, including teams from Kennedy Catholic, Byram Hills High School, Port Jervis High School, New Rochelle High School, Fallsburg High School, Mount Academy, St. Catherine's, and several prominent private teams.

This was the first event for Harvey Team 6277A this season. With members Ben Zilberstein ‘25, Brady Campos ‘25, Joy Chen ‘26, and Emmett Cahill ‘26, the team has an ambitious robot design that has been in development since last September. The team finished sixth after qualifications before being eliminated in the quarterfinals of the playoffs. A great showing for their team debut.

The other four Harvey teams also performed very well at the event. After morning qualifications, Team 6277B One Pancake (Logan Alexander ‘25, Daniel Wood ‘25, and Jack Zimmerman ‘27) was in first place, Team 6277C Hard Wired (Meaghan Sullivan ‘25, Ryan Dey ‘26, and Sara Strnad ‘26) was in fifth place, Team 6277F Byte Force (Luca Nishimura ‘26, Henry He ‘26, Jacob Harkins ‘26, and Sullivan Wieting ‘27) was in seventh place, and Team 6277D ApexNY (Wyatt Bland ‘26 — not in attendance: Maya Taub ‘26, Talya Langer ‘26, Peyton Forde ‘26, and Casey Kelly '26) was in 13th place.

As the playoffs unfolded in the afternoon, Wyatt Bland (Apex) partnered with a Mount Academy team, and proceeded to drive masterfully while knocking the powerhouse duo of Hard Wired and Byte Force out of the semifinals in what was considered the upset of the day. The finals saw One Pancake partnered with Albeto, a club team from New York City, defeat Wyatt and Mount in a hard-fought battle.

“One Pancake had themselves a day,” said Harvey robotics coach Chris Kelly. Logan, Dan, and Jack earned Tournament Champions, Skills Champion (where the robot operates alone in the arena with a score that is a combination of the driver's solo skills and the robot's coded performance), and took home the Excellence Award (the highest judged award).

“One Pancake’s performance was special because it marked the first time a Harvey team has triple-crowned at an event,” said Coach Kelly. “We have had many tremendous robots, drivers, and teams but this was a milestone performance. The team has put in a lot of hours to have one of the best robots in the country,” he said. 

One Pancake has attended three regional events and has been tournament champion at all three. They are in pursuit of a record set by a previous 6277B team of Michael Martirano '20,  Wendy Lichtenburg ‘22, Marley Shyer ‘23, and Bobby Gross ‘20, who recorded six straight tournament championship titles in 2021. 

Also earning a judged award was Hard Wired (Meaghan, Ryan, and Sara), who won the distinguished Innovate Award.

“We are extremely proud of how all these teams did,” said robotics coach John Wahlers. “Ben Zilberstein drove for his first time at an event and the team (Brady, Joy, and Emmett) made it to quarterfinals. Henry, Luca, Sullivan, and Jacob built the only robot in our region with a transmission, which, by the way, is engineered beautifully," said Coach Wahlers, adding, "Their journey to the semifinals was fun to watch.”

“Watching Wyatt, competing solo, expertly drive, maintain, and make coding changes to his machine and face off against two great teams in the finals was nothing short of inspirational, and Hard Wired, who has a tremendous robot designed by Ryan and Sara and an amazing engineering journal maintained by Meaghan, continue to win judged design awards at every event they attend,” said Coach Wahlers. “Coach Kelly and I are extremely fortunate as educators to be able to work with such passionate and committed students,” he said.

Jack, Logan, and Dan of Harvey Robotics Team 6277B One Pancake

All five Harvey School robotics team competing at this tournament