In their first-ever robotics competition — appropriately called the FIRST Robotics Competition — at Hofstra University from March 18 to 21, East Hampton High’s Bonac Bots made a name for themselves, winning the Rookie All-Star award for their robot, the Claminator. They placed 27th out of 48 over all — an outstanding achievement for rookies on a limited budget.
“When you look at the other teams out there, they were often funded by a technology firm or big business and our funding is all from the community,” said Urban Reininger, the high school computer science and coding teacher who mentors the Bonac Bots. “It was really a community fund-raising effort that got us where we are.”
Trevor Gregory, an architecture, design, and woodworking teacher and co-mentor of the Bots, agreed. “Thursday morning on the loading dock, we showed up with — I borrowed my mom’s car, Urban had his wife’s — and the other teams were pulling up with their box trucks and trailers taking out their robots. And the teams are huge and you’re looking around thinking, ‘What are we doing here?’ The whole time, I kind of felt like the Jamaican bobsled team in “Cool Runnings.” We’re rolling in there with our wooden robot and they’re all custom machines and carbon fiber, aluminum, and steel. It was pretty incredible to see where we were compared to those established teams with their funding who have been doing this for years.”
Regardless of their size or experience, all of the teams in the competition received instructions in January to build a robot that could intake balls and shoot them at a target to score points. There was an option to add a climbing mechanism, which the Bonac Bots declined, not wanting to get in over their heads as the new guys.
“In January they released the game with a livestream,” Juan Torres, a senior and the team captain, explained. “They explain the whole game, how it works. They also have a manual they release with specifications for how the robot has to be — like the weight limits and parameters and things like that. Aside from that, every team can build any robot they see fit to build for the tasks in this game.”
As the coder, Carter Petruccelli, a senior, was the brains of the operation, spending long hours and weekends working on the robot’s code. “You write the code that controls all of the different parts of the robot to do certain things. It was pretty difficult. It was a lot of trial and error. We didn’t really know what we were doing when we started. We were still trying to figure things out at the competition.”
They never figured out one of the programs that was supposed to send the robot in specific directions. The entire team laughed, explaining how the program, called path planner, would send the Claminator in the opposite direction from where they hoped it would go. They abandoned it and figured out another path forward.
Over the three days of competition, the Bonac Bots made quite an impact, getting a lot of compliments from other judges and mentors for their accomplishments as rookies, for getting to all of their matches on time, and for how well their driver performed.
“I was the driver. I went behind the big pane of glass and I was using the controller to move the robot around, pick up balls and shoot,” said Wilmer Verdugo, a senior. “I’m pretty happy with how we did. Especially because we’re rookies. I think we did better than some of the teams there who actually had years of experience.”
The Bonac Bots were never in last place, spending the entire competition in the top 30. And they all said they had fun doing it. “Four of us had been on a team prior; we were with Pierson. All four of us had experience but it was really fun teaching other kids how to do all of this,” said Lauren Rosario, a senior who served as the team coach.
The group was able to participate in this year’s competition thanks to donations from local organizations like Kiwanis, the East Hampton Teacher’s Association, and the Rotary Club. Next year, they’ll also benefit from additional school funding. At the most recent school board meeting, Sara Smith, the high school principal, added $13,000 to her 2026-27 budget to cover the cost of the bot and the competition, calling the funding “great for the robotics program.”