[Abra Cadabra IV]

I actually got dragged into FIRST through Girl Scouts. About mid-2007, I got a flyer in the mail advertising a robotics program for girls. It was mostly targeting FLL-age kids (there's a zillion Girl Scout FLL teams in the area) but it did have something for people my age. My mother convinced me to apply to join, and I went along with it, thinking that it would be another generic activity that would be over in a month or two.

That "something" turned out to be one of the first Girl Scout FTC teams - Team 25, the Rock-n-Roll Robots. That first year, we had 7 girls and 3 mentors. One of the girls was a former member of Robodox, and one of the mentors was a former member of WildStang. Nobody else had much FIRST experience or (in the case of the girls, myself included, any robotics or engineering experience whatsoever) any robotics experience whatsoever. We had a rough start in the beginning, placing dead last in our first competition, but after a huge re-design we went on to take 2nd place at two regionals plus winning the Inspire Award (equivalent to Chairman's in FTC) and qualifying for Atlanta. And then when we got to Atlanta, not only did we win an award, we also ended up taking second place.

That something inspired me to join my school's rookie FRC team the same year. That was a whole different experience; we had trouble with mentors and funding and our first year was not so great, but we won the Rookie All-Star Award at our regional and in the process got inspired by all the other teams out there.

That something opened up a whole new world for me. It let me find something I love to do, and it let me make friends and it let me be part of FIRST, something which I will never give up.

Things have come a long way since then; 2429 was proud to be a picking alliance at Los Angeles this year (even if we did lose in the first round), while Rock-n-Roll is coming back to Atlanta after being a strong force at every regional we've attended. And I am so incredibly glad that I got that flyer in the mail.