[maryliz:)]

The Firebirds (433) are one of the longest-running all-female FRC teams. We are based out of an all-girls high school, so therefore the only logical option would be to not have boys on the team. Our school stresses the importance of empowering women through single-sex education.

We comprise 55 student team members, and 80 percent of our alums have gone on to major in STEM (as opposed to only 5% national avg for women). Frankly, I think these statistics are AWESOME. Because we're an all-girls team, our students have to do everything, from building to programming to designing to PR to spirit. Each girl on the team finds an area where she feels she can excel, but we encourage every team member to work with power tools at least once in her career. Many end up finding a passion for drills and saws that they never knew they had, which is why we've been able to inspire so many alums to continue their engineering education. Also, no matter what field our team members end up in, they will surely succeed due largely in part to the confidence instilled in them by being on a FIRST team.

This past October, we hosted our first off-season competition, the girlPOWER Invitational. Ten teams attended POWER (Promoting Outstanding Women Engineers through Robotics), only 3 of them all-girls. The rest were coed teams, but only girls on the team were allowed to drive the robots and work in the pits. We decided to host this event after attending too many competitions where the girls were discouraged from working in these technical positions. We wanted to give the girls on every team the opportunity to benefit from everything a FIRST team has to offer, and hopefully give them the confidence to return to their own teams and try something new on the build team, or try out for the drive team. As long as the girls who want to build the robot are given a fair shot, we have accomplished something.

FIRST is such an amazing program, and no student should be limited in any way from participating, regardless of gender. Yes, it just so happens that girls on robotics teams are extremely outnumbered. But on our team we don't see this as a disadvantage, or anything that should be given a sympathy vote. In the words of one of our mentors and a team alum: “I like to think of us as a great team that just happens to be all-girls, not an all-girls team who just happens to be great. We are equals and can hold our own with the boys. And if along the way we just happen to change the
face of what a typical FIRST robotics student looks like, then we have accomplished something truly wonderful. This accomplishment hopefully can be replicated in all aspects of society, one Firebird at a time.”