Pequea Valley Secondary students Kelsey Della Rova and Carlee Culp recently placed first in the "Technology Problem Solving" category at the Pennsylvania Technology Student Association (TSA) conference, held at Seven Springs Mountain Resort near Pittsburgh from April 15 to 18.

After qualifying by placing in the regional competition, the duo beat over four dozen teams from the commonwealth. More than 1,800 students from 145 different chapters competed at the state conference.

Della Rova and Culp were tasked with making two marbles cross paths after being given rudimentary materials like paper, string and paper clips. The competition tasks students to use problem-solving skills in a 90-minute window.

"I kind of come up with the ideas, and then Carlee runs through it and makes sure it holds up," Della Rova said.

Both 11th-grade students were competing in the event for the fourth time. When asked what was different about this year's competition, Della Rova had a simple answer.

"We actually took the time to read the instructions," she said.

Following the 90 minutes, judges call the top 10 teams to the stage before announcing a winner. Pequea Valley students Nora Hartmann, Caleb Smucker, Caedmon Marshall and Celine Stoltzfus also placed at the high school level in events like "Animatronics," "Extemporaneous Speech," "Forensic Science" and "Photographic Technology" while Luke Kauffman, Axton Smoker, Nate Hoover and Huxton Smoker also placed in the middle school division.

Outside of the competition, Della Rova and Culp both expressed loving the conference's other activities like swimming and pickleball.

Della Rova and Culp will represent Pequea Valley and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania at the national TSA conference, to be held from Monday to Friday, June 22 to 26, in Washington, D.C.

The national conference will task the students with a more complex problem that will force them to use stronger materials like wood and metal. The pair have been researching, looking at prompts from previous competitions to prepare.

"It's hard to prepare for because of how open-ended it is," Culp said.

Neither student is sure what their postsecondary future will look like, but both are considering integrating STEM into their plans. Both thanked Pequea Valley Secondary TSA adviser Rob Dorshimer for helping them prepare for the competition.

"I think the things that we're learning through TSA are definitely transferrable to whatever career field we wind up in," Culp said.

The Technology Student Association is a national nonprofit career and technical student organization of middle and high school students engaged in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. More than 300,000 students participate in TSA's competitions, activities, leadership opportunities and community service.