Back in October of 2018, Mr Fessler’s Engineering and Design Tech III class had obtained the guidelines for the 2019 STEM Competition. The task that Pennsylvania Governor Regional Stem Competition gave to each the schools was to “Improve the lives of Pennsylvania Residents.” This in mind, the team began brainstorming ideas. The first step for them was coming up with a problem to solve that would relate to this year’s theme. Broken pipes cost the state millions of dollars to repair each year and all the time put into fixing them adds up, so the team decided to tackle this problem by making a robot that could go down and remotely seal the pipes. “We figured not only we could solve a real issue but at the same time make something that we all thought was pretty cool,” says Gavin Harris,sophomore.

As time ticked on and the months passed the team had great designs for a controller and a robot. The problem they didn’t think they’d face was time. Before too long, the STEM Competition was a month away and the team starting working hard. Everything was rolling really well until the string of snow days that plagued the school. Just like that there was a week left and things were looking bleak. “Snow days really messed me up considering it took me 8 hours to print one level of the robot but if I started earlier everything would have went more smoothly.” says Dennis Kull, a senior who was in charge of making the actual robot. After days of staying after school and missing classes to catch up, the team had a robot put together the night before the competition. The regional competition included 4 teams:Nativity, North Schuylkill, Pottsville, and Pine Grove Area presented their piece and were judged by local engineers. Pine Grove Area presented their robot that they called “The Ugly Duckling”.  Pine Grove Area took home 3rd place losing to North Schuylkill’s AI traffic light controller. After the competition, teacher Brad Fessler said, “I think they had a great idea and I think with better time management and better work ethic these guys get their robot done and have a great chance to win”.