Girls rocket team from Cambridge dedicating practice launch to bombing victims

By Brock Parker, Town Correspondent

An all-girls rocketry team in Cambridge that is soon to compete in the national finals will launch a rocket Saturday to honor the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing.

Cambridge’s Science Club for Girls’ Team Teckorettes will launch the rocket in Acton Saturday in honor of the victims and to practice for the Team America Rocketry Challenge Finals on May 11th in Washington D.C., according to the science club.

The team of seven girls from several different schools in Cambridge and Greater Boston has been ranked among the top 100 rocketry teams in the country headed into the competition.

The rocketry teams compete by designing, building and flying a model rocket that reaches a specific altitude and duration determined by a set of rules developed each year, according to the contest website.

The team from the Cambridge’s Science Club for Girls is lead by captain Marianna McNeil, a sophomore at Urban Science Academy in West Roxbury. Her teammates are Alyssa Wang, a freshman at Prospect Hill Academy in Cambridge, Tatevick De La Rosa, a senior at John D O’Bryant School of Math and Science; Dina Benayad-Cherif, a junior at Lexington High School, Beverly Johnson, a sophomore at Urban Science Academy; and Boston Latin School freshmen Jameelah Julien and Hyei-In Yoo.

Saturday, the team will shoot off their rocket on the School Street soccer fields in Action at 10 a.m.