The competition was a two-day affair. The first day (October 27th) was spent as a setup for the competition and we had dozens of dedicated volunteers working from 3:30PM-Midnight at the old Tahoma High School (Maple View Middle School) in order to setup two entire gyms with equipment and the large FRC regulation field (finished field shown below):
Our volunteers were mostly comprised of Tahoma Robotics Club (Bear Metal Robotics) members and FIRSTWA volunteers (FIRST Washington- the organization that runs FIRST competitions in the state of Washington) although there were students from other teams who showed up to help.
On the competition day, we had 36 teams in attendance, coming from all over Washington State and hundreds of young women from these teams working together to rise to the top. The women on these teams were completely put in charge of driving and fixing their robot. You can see all of the girls that attended below in the drive team field picture:
We started doing this competition in 2012 as a way to introduce more young women to STEM, a career area that has been historically dominated by men. By giving the control completely over to these women, we hope to encourage them to pursue STEM careers and to continue on with the FIRST Robotics program. The program itself provides its participants with many life and technical skills. 33% of the women that go through the program major in engineering in college. Here is some more numbers on the programs impact:
