The “W.A*.G.S.”, an all-Girl Scout robotics team from the West Windsor-Plainsboro Service Unit won the prestigious Inspire Award at this season’s Tech Challenge on January 20. FIRST FTC is a robotics program for high school-aged students, designed to get them excited about science, technology, engineering and math. With the Inspire Award, the team has earned a spot at the State-level FTC Competition on Saturday, February 9, at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
The team includes freshmen Anisha Amurthur, Christina Rancan, Caroline Cardinale, Anusha Chintalapati, Lisa D’Souza, Ria Mittal, and Nikita Nangia; and juniors Ashika Ganesh and Caitlyn Simone.
The nine “W.A*.G.S.”, short for “We’re A (awesome, athletic, artistic, etc.) Girl Scouts”, have been practicing every weekend since August and during most holidays for competitions. Unlike high school sponsored teams, the “W.A*.G.S.” must implement advanced time management tools to be successful, since the girls come from six different troops, three difference towns, and four different high schools.
The coaches are Girl Scout leaders Jan Cardinale, Helen Rancan, and Andrea Mandel. This is their third season with an all-girls team. Their middle school team last year, which included returning members Anisha Amurthur, Christina Rancan, Caroline Cardinale and Caitlyn Simone, was highly successful, capping that season with an invitation to the World Festival in St Louis in April, at which the girls competed against nearly 90 teams.
This past summer Lego League Team 5610, the Bender Bots, was formed by 10 boys from West Windsor- Plainsboro. Although naive to the enormity of their dedication, the boys have become part of an international effort to inspire young people to pursue careers linked to the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).
First Lego League (FLL) challenges the boys to build a robot using LEGO Mindstorm kits and familiarize themselves with elementary programming during an eight-week build season.
Team members include Ryan Hu, Daniel Wang, Eddie Chen, Pranav Mahabaleshwarkar, Anish Rajesh, Vihaan Kedia, Pranav Balachander, Vinay Vishwanathan, Sahil Kumtakar, and Aditya Rao. The coaches are Rajesh Ramachandran and Vish Kedia and the mentor is Shrishti Kedia. E-mail wwfllrobotics@gmail.com for information.
