FIRST LEGO League Challenge Teams

2022

Summer 2022 we hosted our annual FLL Skills Camp in person for the first time since 2019! After camp, 32 kids joined our 4 FLL Challenge teams and we kicked off the season on September 10, 2022. We’ve had a great season so far and we are looking forward to the upcoming FLL Championship competition event in December.

2021 

During the 2021 FLL Challenge season we started off meeting 100% virtually and then in October the Girls of Steel members met in person while our team members were virtual.  It ended up working out really well, but we are looking forward to meeting 100% in person next year!  Check out their blog post! 

2020

We are also running our FLL teams virtually this year with 37 boys and girls on 4 teams.  We are using Zoom on Carnegie Mellon’s Canvas platform.  Check out our first blog post about all the fun!

Girls of Steel Virtual FLL Camp

We had an exciting week (August 10 to 14, 2020) at the Girls of Steel Virtual FIRST LEGO League Skills Camp with 51 boys and girls entering 4th to 8th grades. This year we hosted our annual summer camp on Zoom on Carnegie Mellon’s Canvas platform.  Check out the blog post for more photos and details!

2019

We had an exciting week (August 5 to 9, 2019) at the Girls of Steel FIRST LEGO League Skills Camp with 28 boys and girls entering 4th to 8th grades. This year we hosted the summer camp at Newell Simon Hall on Carnegie Mellon’s main campus.

We started our weekly FIRST LEGO League team meetings on August 28th at our new home for FLL, the Wilkins School Community Center in Regent Square.  Twenty-seven boys and girls on four FLL teams are working on this year’s challenge called City Shaper.

The 2019 season was a huge success! All the teams received awards at the SW PA FLL Championship.  Read all about it here.

2018

We had an exciting week (August 6 to 10, 2018) at the Girls of Steel FIRST LEGO League Skills Camp with 26 boys and girls entering 4th to 8th grades. 

Campers and their Girls of Steel mentor, Ziya.

Our FLL team meetings started August 18, 2018 for the 2018 FLL season, Into Orbit, with 32 students on teams 2641, 4212, 18137, and 33303.  We meet with the students on both Wednesdays and Saturdays this year.  

Kyleigh and Pranita are building their Into Orbit robot

2017

We had an exciting week (August 7 to 11, 2017)  at the Girls of Steel FIRST LEGO League Skills Camp with 27 boys and girls entering 4th to 8th grades.  Next up is the start of the 2017 FLL season with 28 students on teams 2641, 4212, 18137, and 33303.  Here’s a link to the teaser video for “Hydro Dynamics.”  

Our first meeting of the 2017 season was held on August 19th.  We are excited that we started off a week earlier this year.  Another new thing this year is we now have 4 FLL teams consisting of 7 students each.  Each Saturday from 12 to 4 pm twenty-eight 4th to 8th graders meet at the Girls of Steel Robotics practice field space at NREC for meetings about core values, robot, and research project.  This year’s challenge is called Hydrodynamics so the teams are doing research projects about how water is used in the human water cycle.  Our teams this year are: FLL 2641, CM Blues; FLL 4212, Dot Dot Dot; FLL 18137, The Green Gears, and FLL 33303, The Pittsburgh Purploids.  Each team has a team captain who coordinates the plans for the meeting with their Girls of Steel student mentor. 

This year the FLL team competed at an educational scrimmage held at our practice field and at the regional championships held at LaRoche College.  To support the teams’ research projects we went on a field trip to Alcosan and met with lots of experts including Mr. Latham from Alcosan, Ms. Hahna Alexander from Sole Power Tech, and Ms. Meghna Behari, a high school student researcher who talked about her water testing robot project.

2016

We kicked off the 2016 FIRST LEGO League season’s challenge “Animal Allies” with our 3rd annual FLL Skills camp the week of August 8-12, 2016.   The camp ran from 9 am to 3 pm at the Girls of Steel practice field located at NREC 10 40th Street Pittsburgh PA.  The weekly FLL team meetings for FLL teams 2641 “CM BLUES”, 4212 “Dot Dot Dot” and 18137 “The Green Gears” began on Saturday, August 27th, with the final wrap-up meeting scheduled for January 18, 2017.

The teams hosted an educational scrimmage “The Halloween Bash” on October 29, 2016, attended a competitive scrimmage at Sewickley Academy on December 10, 2016, and finally competed in the open division at the regional FLL championship competition (photos here) at LaRoche College on January 6-7, 2017, where 4212 received a 1st place Core Values award for Gracious Professionalism and 18137 received a 2nd place Project award for Research.  The teams met with multiple experts during the season: Dr. Alicia Hahn, veterinarian at the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium,  Meaghan and Sandy of the Animal Rescue League and Wildlife Center, Officers Tim and Logan with Sonic and Ari, Pittsburgh Police K9 Unit, and they hosted a Skype call with Ms. Erica Perl, an author of children’s books, such as Dotty.

2015

The 2015 FLL season began with the second annual Girls of Steel FLL skills camp August 10-14, 2015 at the CMU/Girls of Steel robotics practice field located in the Strip District.  There were 24 campers, 1 junior mentor, 4 Girls of Steel high school mentors, and several adult volunteers at camp.  Photos are available here.  Team meetings for FLL teams 2641, 4212, and 18137 started on Saturday, August 29th. The teams meet on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 6 to 8 pm and on Saturdays from 12 to 4 pm.  Contact us at girlsofsteelroboticsfll@gmail.com with any questions.  We have used programming lessons from the Droids’ EV3Lessons.com website at camp and during team meetings.

In 2014 our friends FLL team 51 Droids Robotics wanted to host a kickoff event for FLL students so we collaborated with them and hosted the event at the Carnegie Mellon University/Girls of Steel Practice Field in September 2014.  That event went so well that we offered to host the 2nd FLL Kickoff in Pittsburgh on Saturday, September 12, 2015. About 115 people (including our teams) attended, including members and families from the following teams 2996, 4481, 6087, 8698, 11529, 15947, 16435, 16737, 17822. It was inspirational and a lot of fun for the FLL teams to share the FLL Core Values activity and learn all about the Trash Trek missions while meeting each other at a noncompetitive event.

The Girls of Steel hosted a Halloween FLL Educational Scrimmage on October 31, 2015.  11 teams and about 150 people attended and had a howling good time. FLL 2641, Robotic Marvels, FLL 4212, Dot Dot Dot, and FLL 18137, The Green Gears, competed in multiple rounds, learned a lot, and had fun.  Photos from the event are here.

The teams went on multiple field trips to Waste Management sites, visited the Pittsburgh Center for Creative Reuse, and enjoyed hearing from PPG environmental engineer.  In addition they participated in a competitive scrimmage on December 12, 2015, winning an award for their joint performance of “Don’t Stop Believing”.  Finally the 2015 season ended with project presentations on Demo Day  on January 7th and the FLL Championship Competition on January 9, 2016, where all the teams competed well.

2014

Summer 2014, Girls of Steel held its first one week full day FLL camp for students from all over Pittsburgh. Fourteen students participated in a fun-filled collaborative camp where students were the teachers.  FLL team 51, Not The Droids You Are Looking For, collaborated with us as mentors who helped with EV3 programming part of the camp, while high school students members of the Girls of Steel were the other mentors.  Of course our adult mentors were there with us the whole time.  Our camp was featured in the media here.

During the FLL World Class season of 2014, Girls of Steel founded two teams again, 4212 FIRST Lego Legends and 2641 Bricks, Sweat, and Gears. The 18 students come from 8 different schools in the Pittsburgh area.  To support their research about ways to improve learning, the teams went on a field trip to the Carnegie Science Center and hosted two guest speakers, Mr. Steven Dang from Carnegie Mellon University, and Ms. Nikki Navta, owner of Zulama.  At a recent competitive scrimmage, these two teams received a Mascot Award for Baymax and First LEGO Legends received the Rookie Award. This year, meetings are held twice a week at the Girls of Steel Practice Field in the Strip District. For more pictures, check out the Girls of Steel FLL Flickr!  At the FLL Championships on January 17th, both teams competed well and the First LEGO Legends received a 1st Place Core Values Award for Gracious Professionalism.

As well as the two teams previously mentioned, some of the Girls of Steel took the initiative to found teams in their own school districts. In 2013 Katie founded FBI, Females Bringing Inspiration in the Plum School District, and in 2014 Arushi founded, RamBots, in the Pine Richland School District.   One of the unique things about the Girls of Steel FLL teams is that they maintain at least an equal gender ratio. We believe that it is important for girls and boys to get involved in STEM at a young age, before there is time for common stereotypes to sink in.  As a result of this, the Girls of Steel pipeline to increase the number of girls in FRC and STEM was created. Check it out here!

2013

In 2013 Girls of Steel was awarded a grant from the Fox Chapel Area branch of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) to establish a FIRST LEGO League (FLL) team in the Fox Chapel Area School District.  Eighteen students applied to join the team, so we decided to start two teams – FLL team 6105 Foxes’ Fury and FLL team 9011 Replasm.  The teams held meetings twice a week at the Cooper Siegel Community Library in Fox Chapel, went on a field trip to Inventionland, and welcomed multiple guest speakers at their meetings. The teams competed in the 2013 FLL Nature’s Fury Challenge at a scrimmage and a regional qualifying event where FLL team 6105 Foxes’ Fury received a 2nd Place Award for Research, FLL team 9011 Replasm received a 3rd Place Award for Research, and Girls of Steel received the Youth Mentor Award. One of the teams, Foxes’ Fury qualified for the regional championship competition (February 2014) and received a 2nd Place Award for Research.  In March 2014, Girls of Steel hosted a Research Symposium for local FLL teams to share their Nature’s Fury research projects with each others teams and guests.

Contact us at girlsofsteelroboticsFLL@gmail.com if you have any questions.