Greenwood’s first-ever GrizzTech competition

The energy in the gym was palpable during Greenwood’s first-ever GrizzTech robotics competition on February 27. Bystanders watched as teams hurriedly revised their robot’s coding on laptops all the while the announcer declared results over a megaphone. Organized by Greenwood’s Women in STEM Club, this was also an inter-school competition that welcomed two teams from Montcrest School and another team from Toronto Prep School. Additionally, 21 Greenwood students on five teams also competed at GrizzTech.

The GrizzTech competition was born out of a desire to have STEM have a more prominent presence at Greenwood. “We see that business is growing steadily at Greenwood and we wanted STEM to get bigger as well,” says Kylie Armstrong ‘25, one of the executives of the Women in STEM Club. “The overall spirit and hype brought to STEM from this initiative was probably my biggest achievement. One of our big goals was to have more girls come out to do more robotics and the all-girls team that participated did very well and worked hard.”

Once teams had signed up to participate at GrizzTech, many worked on their robot’s code before and after school, with Mr. Stubbs supervising. One of the Women in STEM Club execs, Julia McLennan ‘25, designed the trophies that were created using the Innovation Lab's laser cutter and 3D printer. At the competition, each team’s robot was tested to complete three different mazes. The robots with the fastest completion times would be able to advance to the final round. Before the final round could begin, the teams had to evacuate the building due to an alarm triggered by smoke from the HVAC system.

Nevertheless, the results from the first three mazes were enough to determine the winners of our first-ever GrizzTech competition. 

In first place is GCS Team 3 (Oliver Duchesne ‘27, Toby Kimsa ‘27, Fergus Michael ‘27 and Lucas Orsi ‘27). Additionally, GCS Team 1 (Paige Carter ‘28, Anna Dravers ‘28, Chloe Heissler ‘28 and Victoria Mainprize ‘28) won the Women in STEM Award while GCS Team 4 (Charlie Avery ‘29, Toby Hunter ‘29, Athan Mantas ‘29, Charles Martin ‘29 and Bryce Purves Mitchell ‘29) took home the Spirit Award.

Congratulations to the Women in STEM Club for hosting such a fun competition! We look forward to what next year will bring!