Photo courtesy of Dena Moncrief.
Amrita Arora, Becca Maddox, Nancy Chen, Madison Johnson and coach Dena Moncrief stand with their trophy at the state level of the VEX robotics competition.
This month, Pizitz Middle School will send its first team to VEX Worlds, an international robotics competition. The Stargazers, made up of sixth-graders Nancy Chen and Becca Maddox and seventh-graders Amrita Arora and Madison Johnson, are in their first year of competition.
“It was a bit shocking because, at the beginning, I didn’t even really expect to be able to do this, seeing that it was our first year,” Maddox said.
Even though the Stargazers might stand out in their robotics class and at competitions as an all girls team, Arora said they did not start the season hoping to be treated differently. As the season has progressed, however, she hopes other girls are encouraged by their progress.
“I feel like, being an all girls team isn’t different from being on an all guys team or being on a girls-and-guys team,” Arora said, “but I feel like if we go to Worlds and we get noticed, it will help draw more girls into engineering and robotics and these kinds of fields.”
When the four girls started in her robotics class, career and technology teacher Dena Moncrief said she made sure to put them on the same team, so they didn’t get lost in the shuffle with the boys. Having them progress to Worlds, she said, shows a strong message.
“To me, it’s very powerful. It lets the boys know that, ‘Hey, girls can do the exact same thing. We can actually do the same thing and do it better,’” Moncrief said. “At the state competition, another all girls team, but they were high schoolers, they won the excellence award at the high school level. So, I mean it’s girl power.”
Pizitz had three teams make it to state-level competition, where they competed against high school teams. In addition to completing tasks with their robots, the students complete a notebook that explains their work and an in-person interview with judges. Teams are judged on all of those tasks combined, so it takes more than a good robot to succeed.
“They’re using all the skills they learn in their core classes in robotics,” Moncrief said. “They use math because they have to figure out exact measurements, angles and all kinds of things. They’re using their science for gear ratios and their writing skills.”
The Stargazers’ notebook helped them advance to the next level, Moncrief said, and the girls are continuing to work on improving their robot. After each level of competition, Arora said they have worked to change something in their coding or construction.
“We want to have something new and unexpected every time,” Arora said. “Because a lot of times, the robots we compete with, they’re awesome — they have powerhouse robots in the matches — but they don’t really change. I feel like that’s one of the things that holds a lot of teams back; they want to stick to the standard design. So we want to try to come out of our comfort zones.”
At Worlds, most teams will try to be twice as good, Arora said, so the Stargazers aim to be four times as good. Their team aims to have a robot that is outside of the norm, Chen said, differentiating how components like their catapult operates.
“And not only in the way the catapult works, but the way that the robot looks,” Maddox said. “Some of their things, their wires are everywhere, but we try to keep ours clean. We also call it ‘bedazzling’ our robot; we put a little license plate thing on the front of it just for fun.”
VEX Worlds 2017 is April 19-22 in Lexington, Kentucky. While they hope to return to Pizitz with a trophy, Arora said they also serve as an example to other girls seeking to join the world of robotics.
“I feel like a lot of people have this misconception that you have to be a genius to be in robotics, but here we are in our first year, going from nothing to going to Worlds,” Arora said. “I think how far we’ve come would be something that would make girls less reluctant to join because they don’t feel like they can measure up.”
