(SBA) Twenty-four SBL high school students traveled to Johnston, Iowa, on April 7-8 to participate in the State TSA (Technology Student Association) Conference. Over the course of these two days, the state hosted competitions in 30 different technology categories. Students had the opportunity to compete in a wide variety of categories, including CAD Engineering/Architecture, Dragster Design, Musical Production, Video Game Design, and Debating Technical Issues. A record number of students from the SBL’s TSA chapter attended this year’s conference, and those students took part in more competitions than ever before. The TSA conference is comprised of both in-person competitions as well as projects designed and assembled in the months leading up to the event and then judged at the conference. SBL students were accompanied by the High School Computer Science Teacher/TSA Chapter Advisor, Julie Pomerenke.
Thirteen students participated in in-person competitions. Brennan Perkins and Ava Tendal engaged in a coding competition, where they earned third place honors. Three teams represented SBL in Technology Bowl, a competition where teams of three raced to score points for their team by correctly answering questions on a wide range of technology topics. Max Kranig, Tyler Guthmiller, and Clayton Dunn formed one SBL Tech Bowl team, Ty Jackson, Gael DeAnda, and Aiden Ryan comprised a second SBL team, and Ashton Arnburg, Caden Waugh, and Ryleigh Hansen were on another team. In the Technology Problem Solving competition, two SBL duos battled teams from other Iowa schools. Adrianah O’Brien and Halle Murad formed one team, while Ashton Carrel and Cale Schroeder formed the other.
For the first time ever, an SBL team competed in the Forensics competition. Schroeder and Carrel examined a mock crime scene and then demonstrated their knowledge of forensic science through a crime scene analysis.
Ten SBL students took part in the state competition by preparing projects that were taken to the conference to be judged. As soon as TSA announced the year’s challenges and requirements in October, these students got to work. They spent countless hours after school and on the weekends planning, creating, and finalizing the projects they choose to submit. Two SBL teams entered the Children’s Stories competition where they created books with touch-and-feel elements. Halle Murad and Myah Kleve teamed up to write and illustrate one book while Adrianah O’Brien and Chloe Barragan authored the other. Murad and Kleve were awarded second place. Two entries were also submitted for the Board Game Design competition. Isabelle Fetsch, Kendra Berglund, and Brooke Hanson designed one board game while Serenity Connell designed the other.
Seniors Kendra Berglund, Elle Chandy, Isabelle Fetsch, and Brooke Hanson teamed up to prepare projects in three additional categories, and they were awarded first place trophies for their efforts. In the Webmaster category, Fetsch led the group in engineering a website for a vegetarian restaurant, where they were required to showcase the farm-to-table, sustainability, and preparation processes. They used code they first learned in their freshman Computer Science class to create their website. In the category of Digital Video Production, Hanson led the group in planning, recording, and editing a short video that required 30 seconds of animation. The group decided to create a commercial for a special pair of Smart glasses. They created and combined 246 hand-drawn frames to fulfill the animation requirement for the video. For the Fashion Design and Technology category, Chandy took the lead in designing and sewing a marching band uniform that featured a cape that lit up. The cape contained a micro bit, which allowed the girls to turn a dial and illuminate four LED lights, which were designed to represent Earth’s four elements. Blue symbolized water, red symbolized fire, white symbolized air, and yellow symbolized the Earth. This is the second year that this group of SBL girls has received first place in these three categories.
Freshman Andrew MacClure rounded out the SBL competitors. He designed and created a multi-level video game where the player participated in a capture-the-flag type activity. The one requirement for this challenge was that the game be operated by use of the keyboard. The judges awarded him the first place trophy for his video game.
With the first place honors earned by MacClure, Berglund, Chandy, Fetsch, and Hanson, they have been invited to participate in the National TSA Competition that will be held in Nashville, Tennessee in late June. This national competition is comprised of 15,000 or more students from across the nation and world competing to win in their category. There are opportunities to earn scholarships as well. At the national competition, our five students will represent SBL and the state of Iowa in the categories they won in the state competition.
