PLANO, Texas — Among the field of teams competing at the state high school robotics championships in Houston this week, one is sure to stand out— a team of nine middle school girls in wizard robes who are ready to give the older competitors a run for their money.

Leaders from the Plano Rice Middle School Ravenclaw Robotics team said they were shocked when they learned that their team was the only public middle school team to qualify for the state tournament.

“I’m so proud of my girls,” said Coach Anya McCarthy. “It was all them! They just really drove hard.” 

The Rice Middle School girls robotics team. (Spectrum News 1/Brian Scott)

As the team prepare for their trip to the state tournament, tinkering with and adjusting their bot in a Plano classroom, several of the nine young ladies said they knew little about robotics and engineering when they formed the team last year.

“We didn’t really know much about building or programming. We just kind of... had an interest in robotics,” said team member Shreya Gajakosh.

McCarthy said she wanted to set up an all girls team at Rice to see what that interest could translate into. The nine who made the cut —Shriya, Ayushi, Aditi, Katie, Veda, Shreya, Aarini, Aahana and Louisa —immediately got to work and started honing their skills.

The girls and their coach bonded over a love of the Harry Potter series by naming the team Ravenclaw, a mix of Rice’s raven mascot and a house name from the book series, and making the team uniforms Potter inspired robes. 

Their team mascot is McCarthy’s dog and goes by Ravenpaw for sideline support, and the robot that they’ve meticulously built from scratch has been dubbed Dumblebot.

For months the girls fine-tuned Dumblebot is to participate in this year’s robotics event. The first Tech Challenge is a game where opposing teams use their robots to fling ring-like discs into goals at the end of the playing field.

“We’re planning on scoring in the middle goal and throwing off the robots on the other side,” said team member Aahana Shrivastava, who adds that the game tends to get pretty competitive when played in person.

Due to the ongoing pandemic, many of the team’s competitions have been played virtually this year. However, whether in person or virtual, the girls won several competitions. Dumblebot performed well at each event and eventually secured the team a spot in the state tournament.

As they compete this week at the Alamodome, the team said they feel like they’ve already won, though they plan on making a strong run for the title too.

The girls competing on this magical team are Shriya Mohan, Ayushi Savla, Aditi Purohit, Katie Feng, Veda Venkat, Shreya Gajakosh, Aarini Sen, AAhana Shrivastava and Louisa Xu.