The sounds of teammates cheering and encouraging each other. The sights of teams making adjustments to their robots in the pit and the intensive crowd cheering on their school, gives a perspective of how robotics competitions are. 

The Prosper Engineering Team hosted the Texas Talon Throwdown and Fight Like a Girl (FLaG) Competition with multiple teams coming from Texas and Oklahoma to compete in the robotics competition. 

The contest started on Saturday, September 9 and ended on Sunday September 10, with activities throughout the weekend, including the solar car exhibition. 

The FlaG Tournament, an all female robotics competition, invites girls to compete against each other and lasts throughout the duration of the day on Saturday. There was an opening ceremony prior to the start of the competition. 

The Texas Talon Throwdown, lets veteran members and rookie members compete with other schools. 

“There’s a lot of cheering, there’s a lot of sometimes crying, but a lot of the times, you know, happy moments,” LadyTalons Sponsor Min Smart said.

For both days, there were qualification matches in which six teams competed at once while there were three teams, or alliances on both sides.

During the 2022-2023 school year, the LadyTalons was established. Graduate Navya Swali began the program as a legacy project, to help female participation in the engineering team.

As of this year there are three engineering teams, RoboTalons, TechnoTalons and LadyTalons. 

“LadyTalons is an all-girls robotics team, and it was started through FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology),” LadyTalons co-team captain junior Fatemeh Fardin said.

As one of the co-team captains, Fardin’s goal is to create change and inspire other girls who want to pursue STEM. 

“I know that it is very challenging to be a woman in STEM, so I hope that through my position, I am able to inspire more,” Fardin said. 

Students in the LadyTalons have the opportunity to meet other girls who are interested in robotics or STEM in general, throughout the different events and club activities. 

“We wanted to open up this opportunity where they’re meeting other girls like them, and then working together to learn from one another and from the mentors that we have on the team,” Smart said. 

This year’s team is new to the school as a whole, and the LadyTalons are finding out how to work as a team for the first time this year. The experience in the creation of the robots for the competition 

“Since we are relatively new as a team, there is definitely much more for us to conquer, but working together on the robot has been a blast,” Fardain said.

One of the goals for the program is to become the top rookie teams in the state of Texas, as well as to be able to compete in the international FIRST robotics competition. 

“If this is something that they truly are passionate about and something that they want to learn, then to just go for it, there is nothing to lose,” Smart said. 

If you have any questions, email Min Smart or any other CTE teacher regarding LadyTalons.