The last week and a half has really flown by!! We had a great time at champs (won two awards!! :)) and are celebrating, but sad to bring the season to a close.
One of the most important parts of champs for me, the Media Lead of the team, was the presentation we gave on ‘Building a Pipeline for Girls in FRC & STEM’  at the championship conferences.  At this presentation, we shared our story about creating a pipeline, and gave inspiration to other FRC and FTC teams to create their own! Thanks to everyone who came out to the presentation, we appreciated it greatly. It was amazing to be able to share our experiences and interact with the audience about a topic that we are so passionate about (big shoutout to FRC team #5493 St. Mary’s Robotics for sharing your story and the ‘You Go Girl’ tattoos!!). We are looking forward to doing this presentation, expanding the pipeline in our future and continuing to spread our mission about getting girls in STEM!! Look for resources we have created on the pipeline!
Now for the awards: We are overjoyed to have been given the Entrepreneurship Award for the Carver-Curie division and the Media and Technology Innovation Award sponsored by Comcast NBCUniversal! The highlight of winning these awards for me was meeting some of the judges from Comcast, talking to them about our mission and the message we spread through social media, hearing about the judging process which seemed very competitive, and learning a fun fact: that the Media and Technology Innovation Award was actually created by a FIRST Alumni (who also happens to be a woman!) who now works at Comcast! About Ada: We ended up being ranked 45 in the Carver division, with an average of 112 points, and 160 Coopertition points! Our competition skills improved majorly between Buckeye and Champs, with the creation of our ramp, and lots of drive team practices! Overall, our robot this season went through many makeovers with the help of teamwork, but each time improved drastically, which was a success for the team, even if not reflected by rankings.We are still recovering from post-Champs sadness, but cannot wait to see all of our FIRST friends at summer events, through Skype calls and social media, and next year at kickoff! Yes, FIRST really is more than robots!