An all-girl robotics team in Seminole County is gearing up for a very big competition, taking on 400 other elementary school STEM teams in a world championship.
- Seminole County elementary school girls compete in robotics
- Circuit girls team heading to world championships next month
- 1 of 400 other elementary teams from around the world
"It’s just really exciting for me. Now I get to make robots and drive them," said Sierra Leinenbach. “I’ve always been fascinated with robots. It means a lot to me.”
Leinenbach is one of four fourth graders on the team who call themselves, "The Circuit Girls." The 10-year-old Leinenbach's father, Keith, serves as their coach.
“A lot of the times I become the guy that holds the timer when they’re doing the robots," he said with a laugh. “They’re really energetic. It’s stream-of-consciousness-type stuff.”
Twice a week, the four girls -- Leinenbach and 10-year-olds Elaine Chi and Aarushi Joshi, and 8-year-old Charlene Liu -- meet at the Leinenbach home in Oviedo and work on their research project.
“The whole purpose is to work on our STEM research, which is about the ethics of AI helping government," said Liu. “I always asked how things worked when I was little. And I still ask those kinds of questions.”
The girls keep an engineering notebook and, of course, build their robot; they have named her Avexa.
“It’s cool that some things can do what you type in and ask it to do and code," said Sierra Leinenbach.
As they compete, they're often one of the few all-girl teams they see.
“It makes us feel unique in some way," commented Chi.
“We don’t only want boys doing STEM. We want others, we want girls to be in STEM," said Sierra Leinenbach. “We think girls can do a whole bunch and I think it would be amazing to spread out the variety of people in STEM.”
Her father and coach agrees.
“It creates a level of excitement, it’s kind of like, ‘Here we are the girls coming in and taking on the world,'" he said.
And now, after winning states in Tampa last month, the Circuit Girls are literally taking on the world: seeing how they stack up against teams from Memphis to Mumbai at the VEX Robotics World Championship. The competition begins on April 29.
“When they’re at the competition, they’re all business," said their coach.
While the girls hope to place and dream of other girls gaining inspiration from their work, they also have much more simplistic aims.
“Another goal, we want to have fun," said Sierra Leinenbach, who wants to become a scientist, studying either bugs or rocks.
“It makes us feel like we want to get more points to score," said Liu, talking about going up against other teams of boys. “I want to do this next year."