All-girl team from Rockford middle school wins national STEM competition

ROCKFORD, Ill. (WTVO) — A group of Rockford 6th graders has scored first place in the national Cal Ripken Sr. STEM Challenge.

The all-girl Team Zip Zoom is from Marshall Middle School, including Victoria McCallister, Adalia Moyer, Zoe Fosse, Ophelila McClellan, and Lydia Ruffner.

“We really got introduced to this challenge by our teacher, who, like, told us about it, and we were interested in it. So we were like, ‘Let’s give this a shot,'” said Zoe.

The competition challenges teams from around the nation to create a device that helps reduce pollution or cleans up the environment.

“We drew a lot of inspiration from our experiences with the Rock River and all of the other rivers in town,” said Ophelia.

The team created a 4-step process to address shoreline pollution.

“The first part is Ziggy, our mascot. The next step is Zip, which is a drone that has a light on the bottom so it can locate any trash or shoreline pollution. Zoom is a rover that we built. Its job is to collect the trash that was located by Zip, the drone. Zap is a recycling center that will recycle the trash brought in by Zoom,” the group explained.

When the team learned they would be advancing to the final competition in Baltimore, Maryland, what started as a fun lunchtime activity became more serious.

“I think, before, our goals were just like, ‘How will we just try and get as far as we can?’ But once we learned that we were going to Baltimore, we were like, ‘Let’s win this thing!'” Ophelia said.

They ended up securing first place in the competition.

“It also felt kind of like surreal because like the other groups also got this far and it was actually really awesome to have like the entire giant board, just like applauding, showing that kids are awesome,” Victoria said.

Teacher and Coach Stacey Wallace said the competition helped all the girls grow as engineers.