By Aimee YEGHIAYAN

“From the L.A. Regional, team 589, Isabel Martos-Repath!”

Those are words CVHS junior Isabel Martos-Repath never thought she would hear spoken at the annual FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) championships in St. Louis on April 26-27. From hundreds of students, Martos-Repath was selected as one of 10 winners of the Dean’s List Award, given to students who exemplify FIRST ideals and principles and show a commitment to the program.

For Martos-Repath, the journey began weeks earlier when she was chosen as one of two finalists at the Los Angeles Regional competition on March 22-23 where a stadium of robotics students, mentors, families and volunteers let out a roar of applause for her. She beat out students from all over the world competing for the award.

Her commitment to her team and to her community shone through in the essay written about her, telling the judges that she would be the perfect one to receive this prestigious award.

FIRST is a program designed to interest students in all aspects of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). FRC, the high school level Martos-Repath competes in, gives students six weeks to create, design, and build a robot to complete a task. This year, the robot had to shoot Frisbees and climb a pyramid.

In FLL – FIRST Lego League – as a Girl Scout broadened Martos-Repath’s love of engineering. She carried that love into high school, joining the Falkons her freshman year and diving right into working on an arm for the robot, a necessary part of that year’s game. The next year, Martos-Repath was the only girl who was part of the welding team, in addition to being part of the pneumatics and business groups.

After the build season of her sophomore year, Martos-Repath started a team with eight Girl Scouts. She hoped to attract girls to engineering and doubled her FLL efforts in the fall by leading two all girl teams in addition to mentoring other teams.

This year, as robot captain, Martos-Repath helped create one of the designs for the robot, working with pneumatics to get the job done. She also traveled after the build season to Madera, Calif. with a few members and mentors of the team, including her mother Lyn Repath-Martos, to volunteer as part of the field reset at a different robotics competition.

In addition to her involvement with robotics, she also is a member of the CV track team as a pole vaulter, and continues to be involved with her Girl Scout troop and working on her Gold Award.

Martos-Repath was joined in St. Louis by one of her best friends, Heather Abrams, as well as judge Mark Abrams and Lyn.

Along with the recognition of being a recipient of the Dean’s List Award, named for Dean Kamen, creator of FIRST and the Segway, Martos-Repath received a unique trophy; a written recommendation from FIRST leadership to the college(s) or employer(s) of her choice; a credit towards the CVHS Falkon’s 2014 registration fee; a commemorative plaque for the CVHS Hall of Fame; an invitation for her and a chaperone to attend an expenses paid FIRST Dean’s List Award Summit at FIRST headquarters in Manchester, New Hampshire; and the opportunity to work with all members of the FIRST Dean’s List and FIRST leaders to advance the mission of FIRST.

For more information, visit CVRobots.com or USFIRST.org.

  Aimee Yeghiayan