Maria Gavoila has spent her whole highschool years jumping through hoop after hoop to be able to get to where she is. From battling through 9 clubs after school her junior year and four AP classes, to finishing off her High School years leading robotics to world championships Maria has excelled throughout highschool and is ready for her next chapter.
In the midst of her junior year Maria was hit with the harsh news of multiple family members getting cancer. “A bunch of people in my family got cancer. Like, that was kind of mentally challenging. One month, my, like, 40 year old uncle was diagnosed with stage four cancer. My mom had to go back in to see if her cancer was like bag. And my mom just randomly dropped, oh, yeah, your grandpa has cancer and he’s had it for the past year. But it was like, it really bad timing because it was also right like when I was like, it’s like the height of junior year when like, obviously like classes are like, that’s always like the worst year. And I was in nine clubs last year. And I did two sports and like 4AP classes. Yeah. I was not sleeping a lot.” With Maria in the midst of this struggle it didn’t hold her back one bit. She took her robotics team to houstoun and did excellent passing her AP tests showing that even through traumatic life experiences you can always be at your best at work. She also had massive support from everyone in her family like her mom helping her get places supporting her and her Grandpa who drove her everywhere the first two years. Even with all the clubs Maria managed to find time to dominate basketball and track throughout the years being on varsity for both.
Maria at her core is a person who is the engine that runs the robotics program at Terrace, from taking the team to nationals and even worlds to advancing the amount of girls in the program three times as much as she excelled in the program. Robotics wasn’t her focal reason of joining, “I think just when I joined the team literally, we didn’t have, like a business team. And I think for most clubs, like people don’t really, like, think about that that much because, like, it’s not, like a huge deal, but for robotics the operating budget, it’s like $75,000 a year. Like, we have to do a lot of fundraising and there was nobody on the team dedicated to doing it. So, like, the very first year I was on the team, I was like a sophomore with no clue what I was doing, So, like, that first year, we made it to districts and we went to districts and we qualified for worlds. But we didn’t have the team sustainability or the money to go, which sucked, because it was like, we did really well and we couldn’t keep competing. So that next year, shout out Gavin, who like slid into my DMs and was like, hey, you want to run for treasurer? So I ran for Treasurer and I won I ran unopposed. I’m going to brag because we raised pretty much just me because I was the only person on the business team. I raised 90K that year.”
With Marias outstanding contributions she held up the robotics team heavily and not even just this to Maria stated, “And then, outside of success, like for what I feel like I did for the team as we put when I joined the team, there were two other girls on the team. on a team of, like, 20 people. So me and the other people in the team worked really hard to make robotics seem like a safe space and an inclusive place. Because like, I mean, I feel like the lack of women in STEM, like, people joke about it, but it’s actually, like, insane. We’ve just been trying really hard to make it clear that anyone who wants to be in robotics can be there and not even just, like, general inclusion, like inclusion on all fronts. So financial inclusion, because it is like our whole PR pitch. But um, like, we are one of the only teams that like our whole area that doesn’t have a membership fee because we don’t want, like, money to be an issue. And so like we pay for students to go to competitions if they have to and all that. And on the like of more women on the team, in that first year of us really like targeted outreach, we saw, like 300% increase.” Preaching inclusion, Maria exploded the numbers of the program financially and personal wise.
After highschool she is planning on going to John Cabot University in Rome to study business administration. She plans on going because, “I just think going to a college in America, like, I’m going to get a very similar experience to what, like, if I went to UW. Definitely. Like, I wanted, like, a chance to kind of, you know, study, get an education. I’m like, wasn’t there a really big gap here? But I still wanted, like, kind of that cultural immersion. Like, get a chance to, like live life in a place that’s different. Yeah, get a first person like, view of another culture.” Maria stated she just wanted to go into something business related after she finishes out college. Maria will surely succeed wherever she lands because she is a self induced Redbull aficionado and the wings will never fall off living off the yellow flavor pushing her through all of high school.
