Outreach: FIRST as a Movement in our Communities - FTC Team 7785

Texas is the home of The Alamo, delicious BBQ, and the slogan “Don’t Mess with Texas.” It is one of the largest states in the continental US and encompasses some of the most diverse terrains in the country, ranging from deserts, swamps, to coastlines. It also happens to be the home of FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) Team 7785, The Pink Lady Hornets, a team who had the honor of advancing to the FTC South Super Regional for the 2013-2014 season.

These ladies hail from Flour Bluff High School in Corpus Christi and alongside them, have a program at their school that includes 4 additional rookie teams, 2 of which are all girls’ teams. Team 7785, an all girls’ team of juniors and seniors, states that their mission is "To not only spread the idea of robotics, but to change the future of robotics by encouraging young girls to dream of being in the STEM fields and to chase these dreams regardless of societal stereotypes."

This past season, The Pink Lady Hornets held their first “No Robot, No Problem Invitational”, a no cost robotics competition where no robot or experience was needed. The goal of this event was to bring schools/organizations without an FTC presence into the FIRST family. To incentivize teams to join them, The Pink Lady Hornets did not charge a registration fee and built “loaner” bots for teams with no FTC program to use. Their invitation to their FTC peers encouraged them to join them in this great networking event and asked for teams to bring their pit areas to help create and demonstrate the competition feel to the “no robot” teams. Some FTC teams contributed to the event by bringing in additional “loaner” bots as a way to help spread the resources to the “no robot” teams.

“The response we received was tremendous.” Although they capped the invitation to 20 teams, these 20 teams included an event split of current FTC teams and “no robot” teams. Each “no robot” team was assigned an FTC mentor team and those FTC teams worked to walk them through the process of inspections, drivers meetings, and the most important aspects of driving their “loaner” bots.

The event was a great success and The Pink Lady Hornets have no doubts that we will be seeing some additional teams from their area joining the FIRST family this coming season.   They continue to build relationships with current FTC teams and have now created relationships with potentially new teams.  These ladies hope to continue to run this tournament as an annual event. Moving forward until there comes a point where the challenge that they find is not limited resources, space, or time, but rather that there are no more schools/organizations NOT involved in the FIRST family.

For more information about The Pink Lady Hornets, follow them on Twitter, join them on Facebook, or email them at fbhsrobotics.at.gmail.com.