Students from the Pella High School and Middle School recently competed in the 2023 Iowa Technology Student Association (TSA) STEM Championships. Two hundred and thirty students throughout the state of Iowa competed at the two-day event which was held at the Adventureland Conference Center and Resort in Altoona.

Principles of Engineering students Grant Hartke and Jack Weaver were crowned state champions, while Zander Riddel and Lucas Blake finished second in the Structural Engineering competition. Each team was required to design and build an engineering structure during the competition which later went through a destruction test that calculated each team’s design efficiency rating.

The Robotics team once again earned a state championship as eighth grade students Chetan Vanam and Ethan Flanders won the Middle School VEX Robotics Championship. This marks the second year in a row that members of the Bionic Dutch have earned a state title at the TSA competition. The High School team led by Hayden Papendick, Jack Weaver, Trevor Hundt and Meav Swank won 2nd place in the senior level division.

Also placing second were Pella students Taton Geetings, Elijah Schakel and Dylan Van Wyk in the highly competitive Radio Controlled Transportation Championship.
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