On Friday, 23 high school teams headed to Shaler Area High School to participate in the annual science, technology, engineering, art and math competition.

“This is our eighth time hosting the competition,” said Paul Stadelman, high school math teacher and event co-coordinator. “When we first started, we were only around six or seven teams. Now, we’re averaging around 23 to 24 teams from schools as far away as West Greene and Beth-Center, to schools right next door like Fox Chapel and North Allegheny.”

Throughout the day, teams of five students representing their schools traveled to different areas of the school and were charged with assorted tasks focusing on each subject of STEAM.

“There are different challenges all around our building,” Stadelman said. “They were all a secret. They just show up as a team of five students and perform whatever the challenge is.”

Tasks included shooting a small rocket based on accuracy and distance, building a car that would be judged on how far it could travel and identifying bacteria based on photos from a magnifying glass. The main event of the day involved “lunar rovers,” robots built by students.

“This competition was designed so that schools that signed up about four months ago received instructions that (teams) would be building what we called our version of a lunar rover,” Stadelman said. “They were tasked with building a machine or a vehicle that was going to be able to go through a course, picking up random objects.”

Each team had to pick up a basketball, 5-pound dumbbell, pingpong ball and sand. None of the teams knew what items their creations would have to handle, and they were given time to adjust their machines to fit the tasks.

The competition was overseen by teachers from all departments of the school and more than 40 students who volunteered at school on a day off.

Shaler Area High School junior Paige Peterson, 17, is a competition veteran. This was her second year as a member of one of Shaler’s two teams.

“I joined math honor society freshman year, and we volunteered to help with the STEAM competition,” she said. “My sophomore year, I got together a team with my brother and we got to participate.”

Peterson said that she was inspired to compete when, as a freshman, she saw how much fun the other teams had. She said that the competition changes themes each year. Last year, teams built a basketball shooter.

“You do a lot of rounds in the competition to get points,” Peterson said. “(Competition day) is a little stressful, but it’s pretty fun. I look forward to it. A lot of the buildup to it is getting your actual machine that gets a lot of the points done before the day.”

Trinity High School’s Blue Team earned first place with 235 out of 280 points and enjoyed bragging rights, a plaque and some small prizes.

“An interesting and great consequence from (the competition) is that our entire high school staff gets to work together,” Stadelman said. “This is a day that all the teachers are helping judge, helping work with the students, and a lot of our teachers put in a lot of extra time planning this and working on the events. This is truly a team and collaborative effort for the entire high school staff and administration.”

Copyright ©2025— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)