Lea Rodger'26
The FRC (FIRST Robotics Competition) season began on January 10, 2026. Southold High School is home to our local robotics team, RICE (Respect, Integrity, Compassion, and Equity), which includes students from Greenport, Southold, and Mattituck. Team RICE began preparing for competition with meetings six days a week starting in January.
This year’s game theme, Rebuilt, required teams to build a robot capable of collecting hard foam balls and shooting them across the field. The team’s first event ran March 18–21 at Hofstra University’s gymnasium. Team RICE placed first out of 48 teams with a top match score of 501, qualifying them for the FIRST Championship in Houston, Texas.
Following that event, the team rebuilt their shooter, switching from two single-stream shooters to a drum-style shooter to improve performance. They then competed at their second event, April 15–18, at MVP Arena in Albany, where they placed first again out of 60 teams with a top score of 712. Shepherd Odell, team secretary and human player on the drive team, said, “The redesign of our robot boosted our EPA (estimated point average) from around 120 to 250.”
After the Albany victory, the team shipped the robot to Houston and prepared for Worlds. At the George R. Brown Convention Center, they set up their pit and readied the robot for competition. Team RICE advanced to the semifinals and finished 41st out of 600 overall among the world’s top teams.