John Jay robotics team among the world's best

 The John Jay High School Robotics Team with their championship banner (left to right): Matthew Mendez, coach Jonathan Peter, Haolin Li, Alex Bond, Sagi Ohana, TJ Panek, Kiera Coffey, Oliver Kuszynski, Emerson Flamm, Kishen Kathuria.

By JEFF MORRIS 

On June 10, 2025, it was announced that John Jay Robotics was awarded $8,000 from the Gene Haas Foundation. 

“We’re incredibly grateful for this generous support,” said Jonathan Peter, the robotics teacher/coach at John Jay High School. “These funds will go directly toward parts and equipment to help our teams compete at the highest level.” In its announcement, the district noted that in the previous two years, John Jay’s robotics teams had represented the school at the World Championships and brought home New York state titles. “We’re excited for what’s ahead,” said Peter. “Next season is shaping up to be one of our best yet.”

He knew what he was talking about.

On May 2, 2026, John Jay High School robotics Team MOB made history by coming in 18th in the world in the FIRST Robotics World Championship in Houston. 

FIRST, or For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, is a nonprofit organization that is the world’s leading youth robotics community.

In the culminating event of worldwide youth robotics competitions, Team MOB finished the round-robin tournament ranked 12th in their division, higher than any other team from New York State; no other team in the entire Northeastern region had ever achieved such a high ranking before. They formed an alliance with two other U.S. teams and went on to win the division, becoming one of just six division champions. Team MOB was the first New York team to compete in the da Vinci Finals and emerged as one of the top 18 teams in the world. 

The tournament draws the top 300 out of 8,500 teams throughout the world and it is highly competitive to qualify. JJHS competed with and against teams from China, Brazil, Romania, South Korea, South Africa, and more, as well many teams from the United States.

Team MOB students mastered hardware and software, driving skills and game play strategy. They also learned not-so-obvious skills: project management, social media, interaction with teams in different time zones in different languages, internal team dynamics, and grit. Peter told The Recorder they often stay late into the evening, and come in on Saturdays, snow days and days off.

“Kids on this team have real grit and practice the real-world skill of iteration and refinement,” he said. “They fix, re-do, re-evaluate constantly.”

According to Peter, his role is as coach. “The robot organization, FIRST, calls me coach, and also mentor. I meet my students during a class, so I could also be a ‘teacher.’ I’m not so concerned with my title.”

This is Peter’s fifth year running the robotics program at JJHS. 

“I was previously a physics teacher and worked both here at several districts in New York, and overseas, including the American Embassy School in New Delhi and the Shanghai American School,” he said. 

There are four robotics teams at John Jay.

“Steve Zoeller, my predecessor, started the robotics program and also created team 10949, MOB and 12414, the Leftovers,” he said. “I created two additional teams: 20203, Vulkan, and 20228, Screwups. This year three of four teams qualified for the state championship. At the state championship, MOB was undefeated.” He explained that MOB is short for Mechanical Operations Bureau, “and is a nod/jest to New York’s old-school gangsters.”

He said MOB also went to the championships in 2023, “so this is the second time in three years we’ve been there.”

A parent pointed out that JJHS achieved everything on a shoestring budget; that, for example, with no money to fly their heavy equipment with them, they shipped with UPS, but UPS lost some of it and the team had to travel to another team’s hotel in the evenings to practice. Peter confirmed that UPS lost some of the equipment that they would have used to practice and fine-tune their robot during the evenings.

“Without this we were at a serious competitive disadvantage, as most other competitive teams had their own,” he said. Another team did have some of the needed equipment, “and they generously offered us to use it for a bit,” he said. “We went to their Airbnb for a couple hours one night. That was helpful, but we didn’t want to overstay our welcome.”

Peter also confirmed that while other teams hired a bus for transportation in Houston, he drove the team around in a big 12-passenger van. 

The parent observed that at the competition, the Romanian teams listed 50 lines of financial supporters and had a picture of the team shaking hands with the Romanian president. This contrast is among several that are not lost on Peter.

“It’s of note that most other teams at the championship are clubs,” he said. “They have two major advantages: they can meet for longer — say, four hours on Tuesdays and Saturdays — and participants can be in the robotics program for 4-plus years. This means the teams maintain institutional knowledge and technical skills much more easily.” 

Peter said students at John Jay can only participate for two years, and the onboarding process is quite steep.

“Furthermore, these club teams have aggressive fundraising and sponsorship strategies and often have budgets 10 times what we have here at John Jay,” he said.

Peter added, “We are in the process of looking for sponsors.”