Team Spotlight

FRC Team 4816 - Gadget Girls

This month we are shining the spotlight on FRC Team 4816, the Gadget Girls. The Gadget Girls are an all girls robotics team based out of Raleigh, NC. Go Go Gadget Girls!

Tell us in 2-3 sentences about your team:  Team make-up, where the team is from, that kind of thing.

The Gadget Girls are North Carolina’s oldest all-girl team and we are going on seven years of being involved with FIRST. We are Girl Scouts from the Triangle region of North Carolina.

What has been a highlight for your team over the years?

There were many highlights for our team over the past few years. We will always remember making new friends on the team and at competitions, trying new things like helping little kids learn about robots, and learning how to build and program robots ourselves. Many of us had never touched a robot before joining the team so that’s a fun one! Another highlight is that we have learned not be worried about failure because failure is just an opportunity to learn something new. We will always keep that mindset because there is always time to learn more things!

Tell us about one struggle your team has overcome and how you did so.

One of the biggest struggles we have faced was that we have been a small team for most of our existence. This has caused us to not have enough hands for what needed to be done and people ended up doing more than they originally thought they were going to be responsible for. We overcame this by having a prioritized to do list at each meeting to make sure we were getting everything done in the most efficient order possible. When we didn’t have enough people to get everything done we had to make sacrifices and plan how to get those tasks done later.

What words of wisdom would you give to a rookie team?

Some words of wisdom that we would give to a rookie team would be that it will always be okay and everyone is willing to help you! You will make mistakes but you can learn so much from them and that’s how you get better 

What does FIRST mean to you and your team?

FIRST to us is people who are passionate about robotics and STEAM coming together and learning together. It is not just separate teams competing, it’s a community of teams helping each other every step of the way. FIRST is also an opportunity that prepares us for our future by giving us a peek at the real world of STEAM and what our potential careers could be like.