Pascack Pi-oneers
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The Pascack Pi-oneers are a joint high school robotics team.
For years, Pascack Hills High School and Pascack Valley High School have participated in the Panasonic Design Challenge, which ended in 2004. Looking for an exciting new task for the Engineering Club, senior Matt Hayon of Pascack Valley, class of 2005, stumbled upon US FIRST. After a lot of work, the Pascack Valley Regional High School District became a part of US FIRST as Team 1676. Matt, Coach Phil Paspalas, and the team of 30 students from Hills and Valley, went to the New Jersey Regional and won the Rookie All Star award in 2005. As a result, the team went to the Georgia Dome for the 2005 National Championships, where they competed as part of the Archimedes division.
Team 1676’s major sponsor in its rookie year was Mercedes-Benz, who contributed both financially and with mentors. The team had support from the school system via financial contributions. This year (2007), the team has a new "flagship" sponsor, Dassault Falcon Jet, along with the Pascack Valley Regional High School District which are sponsoring the team as well. Mercedes-Benz continues with its mentor support.
For the 2006-07 school year, the team trained almost 45 new rookies in the comprehensive Pi-Tech Academy, teaching students the skills of programming, pneumatics and drive systems. This was led by teachers, mentors, and veterans. The rookies also learned the values of FIRST when they were part of the FIRST Vex Challenge, where they, also as Team 1676, won the New Jersey Vex championships and will be going to Atlanta. In 2006, it became one of 39 teams to receive the National Instruments DAQ software, to tweak and perfect our robot. The team hopes to contribute to the FIRST community with valuable feedback from this software.
Team 1676 is growing by leaps and bounds. Having doubled in size, more than doubled our funding, and doubling the number of regionals we will be attending (for 2007, Trenton, "Buckeye," and The Championship Event), Team 1676 hopes to carve a permanent niche in the FIRST community.
