Afrah Nazar / Community / The Missfits

PR/Media Lead · 2026–27 · Judges’ Award, East Bay District 2026

The Missfits — FIRST Robotics Team 6418

An all-female robotics team. I designed its feeder, wired its LEDs, and now tell its story.

What it is
FIRST Robotics Competition Team 6418 — an all-female team based in San Francisco, with members from across the Bay Area. 9 leads, 50+ members, 7 mentors
My role
PR/Media Lead (12th) · Member, mechanical and code (10th–11th)
2026 robot
Cleo
Season
Two district qualifiers a year, then the district championship if the team qualifies; off-season invitationals (Sunset Showdown, CalGames) and demos at Proof School, farmers markets, night markets and the Open Sauce festival
Honors
Judges’ Award, CA District East Bay Event, April 2026
  • 50+members
  • 30on the media team I lead
  • 11thof 39 robots, East Bay 2026
  • 37thof 145 NorCal teams, 2026

Links

The 2026 season

The team builds one robot a year. In 2026 it was Cleo.

EventFinishHow it went
Silicon Valley District16th of 372nd pick, Alliance 5 · 3rd-ranked alliance of 8 — the team’s deepest playoff run since 2019
East Bay District · Berkeley, 2–4 April11th of 391st pick, Alliance 4 · 3rd-ranked alliance · 37th of 145 Northern California teams · Judges’ Award
NorCal District Championship · Cow Palace, 9–12 April48th of 60Qualified for the top 60 teams in Northern California
The team’s own newsletter records the Judges’ Award as recognising “our strong focus on rapid iteration and our commitment to promoting teamwork, especially in supporting and integrating new members.”

As PR/Media Lead

  • Manage the 30-member PR and media team.
  • Write the newsletter — weekly in build season, monthly off-season — with photos, competition recaps, and member activities for parents, students, and mentors. About two hours each.
  • Design and run the Instagram: project updates, competition recaps, sponsor announcements, outreach promotions.
  • Design and order the competition deliverables — banners, t-shirts, pins, stickers — with sponsor logos, about ten hours a season.
  • Photograph and film team activities for social media and the website, and manage the photo consent forms.
  • Keep the website current: robot pages by competition year, blog posts, media galleries.

As a builder, tenth and eleventh grade

Designed the robot’s feeder in Onshape with three teammates and two mentors, and coded the LED lighting in Java with three teammates. Seven hours a week.

Photos

Afrah Nazar leaning over a robot mechanism with a tool, safety glasses pushed up on her head
Safety glasses up, hands on the intake.
A FIRST Robotics competition robot on the floor, showing rows of green rollers and a metal collector
The robot, front on: green intake rollers above, collector below.
Afrah Nazar working on the Missfits robot at an event
Reaching in at a team event.