This year, students from all over Western Pennsylvania came to compete against each other in a competition called Powering Pittsburgh. Powering Pittsburgh is a competition held every year where students from a multitude of schools work to find an alternative solution to powering the city of Pittsburgh and Acrisure Stadium. Freedom had four students travel to Pittsburgh to compete this year: juniors Christopher Denkovich and Jason Mengel along with seniors Logan Larrick and Logan Bickerstaff. These four students worked together to create a new form of energy for Pittsburgh with their instructor, Ms. Sara Miller.
The students first competed at the Community College of Beaver County’s Technology Center against schools like Blackhawk, Hopewell, and Seneca Valley. After a hard-fought competition, Freedom’s team was able to come out on top and place first, allowing them to compete at Acrisure Stadium for the final competition on Nov. 8.
After the first competition, the four students worked to fix any details and problems in their model, as well as complete any fine details they missed. In Powering Pittsburgh, they are judged based on their presentation and model, so after they are given criticism, they fix and improve their model and presentation for the next round of competition.
On Nov. 8, the team set off for Acrisure Stadium, where they got to tour the football stadium and see the locker rooms of the players before they competed.
“Honestly, my favorite part of Acrisure was getting to tour the field. It was really cool to see behind the scenes and visit the locker room of all the players,” Mengel said.
After the students were done touring the field and locker rooms, they got ready to present the model and slideshow that depicted how they planned on powering Pittsburgh. The students worked to make a renewable energy source by using land, air, and water to power the city of Pittsburgh with wind turbines, water wheels and photovoltaic glass. After preparing for their presentation, they went head to head against the other schools to see who could come out on top. After a multitude of very detailed presentations and models, Freedom was unfortunately not able to take home the win.
“I think our presentation went really well; we all spoke our parts well, and we knew the information like the back of our hands,” Bickerstaff said.
Even after the loss, the students were still very thankful to be able to tour and see Acrisure Stadium. With Larrick and Bickerstaff being seniors, they will leave behind the rest of Powering Pittsburgh to juniors Denkovich and Mengel, who will hopefully continue to win competitions for Freedom in the future.
Freedom’s Powering Pittsburgh team continues to give a good name to Freedom with two consecutive regional wins in a row. They hope to continue winning competitions for Freedom.