On Tuesday, October 6, we kicked off our 2015-2016 year. It was the first time we had all of this years girls together. In total our team will include 66 girls from 31 area schools. Our team’s  junior member program has 17 eighth grade girls. With this program the girls will be meeting once a week to explore the FIRST tech challenge (FTC) robotics platform. On the FIRST robotics competition (FRC) side there will be 49 girls competing.

Our meeting began with an informational session for the entire team. After, we broke off into triads (groups of returning girls, new girls, and junior members) to play games. The triads gathered and did a few “get to know you” activities! Everyone was excited, especially because candy was involved. After this the junior members and their parents split off for another meeting detailing the specifics of the upcoming year for the juniors. The high school girls did rotations to explore the three business subteams – media, finance, and outreach – as well as our drive team. The girls learned what each subteam did and before the end of the meeting they ranked which subteam they would like to be a part of during the season. To end our first successful meeting we gathered to take our first team photos of the year! All signs indicate a very successful season – especially since we found out about our newest sponsor – Verizon!

-Alexa