GLASTONBURY, Conn. — The Glastonbury all-girls robotics team, Armored Aretmises, is set to compete in the FIRST Championship in Houston this April after winning the CT FIRST Tech Challenge State Championship in their winning alliance award and inspire award.
Armored Artemises, which began in Dec. 2018, is an all-girls community-based team, ranging from seventh to 10th grade. The team came from a previous program, but they wanted to have an all-girls team interested in STEM.
There are currently 10 girls a part of Armored Artemises, all of which are from Glastonbury.
“We’re hoping to start a new program to empower women in STEM. Especially at our age. There have been a couple of studies showing that at the start of middle school girls get interested in STEM so they join programs,” 9th grader Harlow Ton-That said. “We think that might be due to not enough representation so we hope to offer that representation on a broader scale.”
As part of the team's efforts to raise awareness, they have coaches and mentors from Amazon and engineering companies. They also work toward sponsorships and fundraising for the team.
“We want to learn how to work in a large community and help as many people as we can, even though we’re at a younger age and we might not be as experienced as others. We really want to learn how to empower others and teach others.” 9th grader Bella Weidmann said.
Prior to making it into the FIRST Championship in Houston, the Armored Artemises won the FTC State Championship.
“We’ve been working for years as a team, this is a big accomplishment and achievement, not just for us but for the community because we worked with a lot of different companies in our town and it's a big achievement for everyone involved,” Bella Weidmann said.
The FIRST Championship in Houston, which will take place April 20 to the 23rd, is an international event for the youth robotics competition season. It is also meant to celebrate STEM and prepare students for the future. During the competition, the teams will present their work to the judges, followed by an elimination round.
“We prepared by meeting at the coach’s house practicing driving the robot along with fundraising and meeting with other robotics teams to practice more. We also practiced speeches for the competition,” 7th grade Carina Weidmann said.
Armored Artemises also have a robot that is hand-made up from metal that they created themselves, which they will be using in competition. The team also makes alliances with different teams and they compete with other alliances. They will also be presenting this season's work to judges as well.
Jareliz Diaz is a digital content producer at FOX61 News. She can be reached at jdiaz@fox61.com
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