North Fork robotics team returns home after fourth-place finish in Houston

North Fork students came home to a hero’s welcome Sunday, escorted by multiple local fire departments after a fourth-place finish in Houston that put Southold, Greenport and Mattituck on a global stage.

The 26-member Team R.I.C.E. 870 competed in the Curie Division at the FIRST Championship in the George R. Brown Convention Center from April 29 to May 2, where 74 teams battled for a shot at the Einstein Field and the World Finals. The North Fork squad was selected into Alliance 4 as the first pick, then joined Gray Matter of Hemlock, Michigan, and Broncobots of Lees Summit, Missouri, before being eliminated in the double-elimination bracket in Round 4.

For a program based in Southold, the result underscored how far a small regional team can go with discipline and support. The team’s official 2026 record finished at 30-11-0, and the path to Houston had already been secured at Hofstra University on March 21, when the North Fork group won the Long Island Regional. A fundraiser for the trip said Team 870 was headed to worlds for the 10th time and was raising money to help cover travel costs for 26 students from Southold, Greenport and Mattituck high schools.

The program itself has been building across the North Fork for years. Greenport High School students joined in 2015, Mattituck High School students were added last year, and the Southold-based team now draws from multiple communities that normally compete for attention in very different arenas. In robotics, they share one machine, one design challenge and one schedule built on after-school and weekend work.

Team mentor Ken Tiu said the North Fork squad “out-efforts a lot of teams,” a reflection of the limited engineering resources available to many smaller programs and the work ethic that has become part of the team’s identity. The homecoming, complete with fire company escorts, showed that the accomplishment meant more than a line in a bracket. It was a public celebration of student achievement, school cooperation and a North Fork pipeline that continues to produce technical talent capable of competing with the best in the world.