After a long season and the completion of FIRST Championships, Head Coach Joel Heitman announced the students who will serve on the 2026-2027 Steel Hawks board.
Every board member joined robotics in their freshman year and many are now entering their final season as heads of their respective subteams or as President, Vice President, or Head of Communications. With three years of experience across three robotics seasons, the board is ready for BIOCORE™.
As Head of Scouting Kanon Banno said, “I want to continue contributing to a team that has given me so much while helping it grow even stronger.” When asked what motivated her to take on the position, Kanon said, “The Scouting and Strategy subteam has been my passion since freshman year. I have always enjoyed analyzing data and using it to make informed decisions. Beyond that, the community within the subteam has always been positive and supportive, which has made my experience especially meaningful.”
The team offers new members the skills necessary to succeed through summer camps, allowing them to explore different subteams at first, and dedicated training before the build season. This way “[rookies] have every single technical skill necessary to succeed,” said Incoming President Rahman Arssath.
Additionally, Rahman plans for all veterans to develop the skills necessary to do CAD or 3D design by the end of the summer. Subteam heads determine how they plan to accomplish this within their subteam.
The Classic also asked the subteam heads what they wanted to accomplish next year.
Kanon said one of her primary goals is to “further establish scouting as a vital part of team culture.” She feels like scouting can be overlooked although “data collection and analysis influence both robot design decisions and match strategy.”
Head of Mechanical Albar Hasan said, “[it is the] pass down … [or] the inheritance of knowledge from year to year.” He plans to accomplish this by “[creating] some kind of mechanism guide … to pass down to [his] first year, second, or even rookies next year. And then they could use those to study and have [the] basics to start off.”
Head of Programming Krish Parmar said his goals are efficiency and continuity. He aims to make sure that “the rookies and incoming freshmen know how to program. [And] we want them to be proactive when they program.” The second goal is to “[become more] efficient and [produce] code that makes it easier for drivers to drive.” Krish said, “if we can program a bunch of features to solve issues, then it takes off weight from all the other subteams, and allows us to be ten times better.”
Additionally, rising junior Robert Indart, a veteran in the mechanical subteam, strives to “make sure mechanical is able to work faster [and] efficiently.” He noticed that in previous years, “We have not been able to work fast enough, and that’s just delayed time with programming to get enough time to work on the robot.” Another goal of his is to make sure “our rookies learn everything they should, especially during pre-build season.”
Robert said, “At the end of the day, [robotics is] not just about robots, it’s about the impact you can make on your community.”
In the last two years, the Steel Hawks advanced to the FIRST Championship. First in 2025 by winning the First Impact Award at New York Tech Valley Regional and second in 2026 by winning the Engineering Inspiration Award at New York City Regional.
Rahman plans to continue this as he said, “[he wishes to] make the Steel Hawks sustainable as a whole, which includes making sure that we’re a team that attends the national competition every single year, even past the time I graduate.”
