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Sneaky Bots’ Home-Made Robot Takes The Prize—And More
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February 26, 2026
By Jeff Wilson–
Last seen by Indy readers in early 2024, the Sneaky Bots, a new robotics team of fourth-graders from Sleepy Hollow and Irvington, were competing in the FIRST LEGO League Challenge Regional [Robotics] Championship at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York. Finishing in the top six of 16 teams from Hudson Valley middle schools, they didn’t win or place but felt honored just to have reached that level.
Now, almost two years to the day since that tournament, the Sneaky Bots’ fortunes have turned. In addition to two years more experience and a change in personnel (only two of the four original members remain), the new all-Sleepy Hollow team, with three new members, rocked the 2026 FIRST LEGO competition, taking home the #1 Robot Performance Award with an eye-popping 420 points. (No other Hudson Valley team has even cracked 400 since 2022.)
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The worldwide scholastic robotics program is a partnership of the LEGO Group, which supplies all the materials, and the international nonprofit FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), which promotes STEM learning. FIRST LEGO League (FLL) “gives participants real-world problem-solving experience through a guided global robotics program,” said Liz Zammit, who with her husband Mike has coached the Sneaky Bots (including their son Michael). The organization has three main divisions: Discover for pre-K and first-graders, Explore (grades 2 to 4), and the Sneaky Bots’ division, Challenge (grades 4 to 8. Four of the Bots are seventh-graders at Sleepy Hollow Middle School while the fifth is a sixth-grader at the Hackley School.)
“We added features to make it the best it could be: special flat wheels that improved the accuracy of the robot by creating more grip and surface contact. The dual gear boxes and the box-shaped design allowed multiple missions to be completed at once.”—Sneaky Bots member Ben Margolius
The first challenge was simply finding a meeting time that worked for everyone. “These kids are so busy [with sports and everything else],” Zammit shared, “that the only time the team could get together was on Sunday nights from six to eight.” But it paid off. Over an archaeology-themed obstacle course, using a programmed robot to perform specific missions in a two-and-a-half minute time frame, Sneaky Bots beat out 23 teams in the championship round after surviving several qualifier meets which eliminated most of the 75 initial teams.
The Sneaky Bots’ creation is a colorful, 10-inch-square Lego contraption on wheels with a crane protruding from the top. It carries out its mission on a game “field”—a low table the size of an electric train board—zipping and whirling at a frenzied pace like an Abrams tank on steroids, plucking up or discharging small cargo with its crane at various destinations. The boys control the robot so it’s constantly spinning around and returning to the side of the board where, like members of a racing car pit crew, they deftly snap detachable parts on and off for the next mission. Over the whirring sound of the robot in action, enthusiastic cries arise from the team: “Good job, Tega!” “Take your time!” “46 seconds!” “And it worked this time – that’s good!”
“The gear box system helped us take attachments on and off the robot [between missions]. And we used axles instead of pins because they’re easier to remove.”—Michael Zammit,
Many of the teams in the competition assemble robots that come in kits with instructions. “The boys built it from scratch this year,” boasted Zammit. “There’s no template for it.” That, Zammit continued. “helped them get the #1 Performance Award, which is a huge achievement.”
“I liked how my friends and I got to express our love of building Lego. And having our missions be successful in such a big competition was amazing.”–Tega Nakpodia
As a home or community team, as opposed to a school team, the Sneaky Bots are in a small subset within the FLL which, along with a few 4-H Clubs, Girl Scout troops or after-school teams, make up most of the league. “I would say about 20% are community teams,” Zammit estimated. And while school teams have teachers as coaches and the use of school facilities, the parents are unpaid volunteers with no engineering background and no dedicated space for a workshop. To that end, the Bots are grateful to the Hudson Valley Writers Center in Sleepy Hollow for the use of its facility.
The team got tech help as well. Zammit credits the Bots’ Zoom mentor, Dan Lipin, a high-school science teacher with a Ph.D in engineering originally from Hackley now working in Texas, who taught the Bots coding among other skills. “Some of their code was much more sophisticated this year, thanks to our mentor,” said Zammit. She added that she and her husband help educate themselves by joining in weekly Hudson Valley coaches calls and watching YouTube videos.
“I loved building, coding and having fun with my teammates. I also enjoyed going to competitions, seeing other teams’ innovation projects and watching their robot runs.”—Robbie Smiley
As gratifying as the championship victory was, it wasn’t the first feather in this overachieving team’s cap. The Sneaky Bots also won FLL’S Innovation award at the Westchester qualifying round, held at the French American School in Mamaroneck. This problem-solving research project was held concurrently with the months-long robotics preparation following the same theme: archaeology. Teams were required to present a solution to a challenge faced by those dirt-digging, artifact-hunting scientists.
“I was so grateful to be on the team with these close friends that pushed me on tackling important tasks, topics, and issues of the whole challenge.”— Sebastian Zagorski
The Sneaky Bots were fortunate to have a legitimate archeologist right in their back yard: Sara Mascia, Executive Director of the Historical Society of Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow. Mascia presented the boys with a sifter, a device used to separate valuable artifacts from plain old dirt at a dig site. They experienced what a laborious, time-consuming task sifting was and thought they could improve on it. Using the engineering design process, they imagined, sketched and then created a prototype and built the Sift-O-Matic using a motor and 3-D printer. When they tested their new creation in the sand on the banks of the Hudson, the Bots found their invention sifted 35% faster and with half the manpower needed to operate a manual sifter. “Congratulations to the team,” Mascia wrote in an email to Zammit. “I love the project – how creative! would have used that on all of my sites. I have heard of a lot of ideas discussed – but this one is … so practical and helpful. It would truly benefit archaeologists so much in the field.”
So the Sneaky Bots have proven their intelligence and ingenuity in building a killer robot, and their manual dexterity in arming it for the various missions. But what about their moral compasses? FLL does assess Core Values, in which the Bots once again received high marks. Sportsmanship and fair play – what the organization calls gracious professionalism – are high on the list, as well as the newly-minted quality, coopertition (a conflation of cooperation and competition) by which one helps rivals but still plays to win. The Sneaky Bots’ good character is evident in their efforts to help a new Sleepy Hollow fourth-grade team, The Super Builder Brothers, get started with FLL this year.
Zammit praised her Sleepy Hollow neighbors. “So many people in this community have helped the team, with engineering for instance, and serving as practice judges,” she recalled. ”The boys spent lots of time writing thank-you notes. They want to give back.”
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