On April 12, at the New York City Regional FIRST Robotics competition, the Steel Hawks won the Engineering Inspiration Award sponsored by SpaceX. This award gave 28 championship qualification points to the Steel Hawks, allowing them to qualify for the FIRST World Championship in Houston, Texas. This is the second year in a row in which the Steel Hawks qualified for the FIRST World Championship after winning the FIRST Impact Award at the New York Tech Valley Regional last year. 

“We are so grateful for this opportunity to improve and inspire others,” read a message on the team’s Instagram page. “We are deeply honored to have been selected for the Engineering Inspiration Award.”

At each regional or district event, FIRST presents one team with the Engineering Inspiration Award (EI). During competition, judges interview students for the award. One presenter, junior Al-bar Hasan, said, “whenever we would talk about a certain concept, they would always ask follow-up questions, which seemed like they were actually interested in what we were talking about, which I thought was pretty nice.”

“We worked really hard to prepare for EI, this year especially,” said Vidhi Patel, Vice President of the Steel Hawks. “In the past, whenever we prepped for outreach, we would focus on [the FIRST Impact award], but this year, I believe that we prepped more and more people to talk to judges, and I think that really played a role as to why we won.”

“I just remember feeling really happy and just feeling really fulfilled because we worked so hard throughout the whole season and even before the season to get to that point,” said Head of CNC Vaibhvi Patel. “We prepped a lot of people to talk to judges. We made a lot of study guides. We put a lot of time into making sure everyone understood the impact that our team has made in the community.”

Now with the championships next, Vaibhvi said they would, “add on to our Impact Binder and Tech Binder as well as our Business Plan. [We will see] where we can improve and if there’s anything that we can add. We’re also going to make brochures and try to have a few more QR codes to make information accessible for the judges.” 

Additionally, Vidhi said, “we’ll continue to host public speaking workshops. We had a set number of people that we prepped to talk to judges, but we are thinking of expanding that to have more people talk during pit interviews.”

The award “celebrates a team who demonstrates outstanding success in advancing respect and appreciation for engineering within a team’s school or organization and community.” 

Al-bar cited numerous initiatives the Steel Hawks work on related to these ideals. During ‘Steel the Summer,’ Al-bar said, “we help the incoming freshmen that come to Townsend Harris by introducing them to the basics of each subteam … I was able to teach basic concepts like 80-20 prototyping … [and] got them to be hands-on and not just listen to lectures, which later [led them to] join the team.”

The second initiative he described was Project SHIFT (Steel Hawks Inspiring First Teams) where “we go out to different schools, local to our school, and we teach these elementary school students about concepts of STEM, whether it’s physics, chemistry, or even Lego Mindstorms.”

Freshman team member Aryan Sheikh said, “I feel like we really do work hard to inspire our local community…and I think that really played a part in our advancement to Worlds.”

Dashiell Metzner, a sophomore who is a veteran in the mechanical subteam, also commented on the award. “Did I expect to make Worlds? To be honest, I had all faith in our presenters to send us to Worlds,” he said.

At the start of the 2026 season, FIRST finished transitioning to the new World Championship advancement model. At every US regional event the “top three teams who earned the most points at each event and who have not already qualified for the FIRST Championship qualify for the FIRST Championship.” The Steel Hawks, by winning the Engineering Inspiration Award, received enough points to be in the top three, advancing them to the World Championship. 

This year the FIRST Championship will be held between April 29 – May 2 in Houston, Texas. It is a “culminating, international event for our youth robotics competition season and an annual celebration of STEM for our community.” 

After the team’s performance last year, Al-bar said this year that “it’s nice to see that we’re…going back and that we have a chance at bringing a really competitive robot there.”