Robotics Adds First All-Female Team

By Zainab Mahmood
Staff Writer | The Pacific Times

NP3 Robotics has added a fifth team this year.

“I’ve been meaning to make five teams for a while (and) the school is able to pay for the tournaments (and such),” said Kimberly Knestrick, the Robotics advisor.

This new robotics team, called Team E, has a total of seven members. It is the first, all-female NP3 Robotics team.

“We went to the Google Workshop this summer and it was just for girls… and they were trying to get all girl teams and I was thinking about an all girls team for quite a while and I finally just made one,” said Knestrick.

This new team is comprised of first timers, none of whom have previous Robotics experience.

“I want to see what they’ll come up with,” said Knestrick. “The way it is, is you’re supposed to make a bunch of mistakes because that’s the only way you can move forward and learn from it. This is all for learning and I think they’re going to do great, you just have to give them time.”

The team is working well together.

“I feel like we all bonded really quickly because of our similarities and shared interests,” said Team E member Tanuja Balasa. “We’re also all newcomers so we’re all in the same boat of building a robot from scratch with no prior knowledge.”