Local teams come home winners from STLP championship
It's the largest event Rupp Arena hosts, with 25,000 attending, according to Cara Ryver, sixth-grade language arts teacher at Boyd County Middle School and STLP coach, whose student Peyton Moore won first place in a creative digital arts category called Kentucky Travel.
'Entrants were tasked with choosing any town in Kentucky and finding something about the town to focus on,' Ryver said. 'The theme was Bluegrass Bites and students were to find a restaurant and review it.'
She said Moore's video focused on The Mill AKY in Ashland.
'This is typically a team project, but he did it all by himself, from beginning to end,' she said.
Moore, a seventh-grader, is the son of Greg Moore and Heather Moore-Frame.
'It was notable how well eastern Kentucky was represented, between Greenup and Boyd counties,' Ryver said.
One of the two teams from Russell High School won Best Technical Project in the state, encompassing all grades.
Coach Carolyn McGranahan, who also teaches AP U.S. history, world history and fine arts, said the winning team created Project Lockdown, a small computer unit that collects visual information to help first responders to school shootings see where problems exist. Using their technical skills and information they collected from the school resource officer, e911 experts, teachers and IT people, they developed an inexpensive information processor that aims to help save lives, especially in school districts that can't afford more expensive systems.
McGranahan said for the students, the project was personal.
'We're living in an age where lockdowns, unfortunately, have become a normal thing,' she said. 'Kentucky was the first state in the United States to have a school shooting and it was close to us.'
She said they chose a project that would make a difference and would be affordable to all schools.
'It's outstanding,' she said. 'It's truly remarkable what they've accomplished.'
Summit Elementary's team won first place in its category, as it did two years prior. The coach is Letitia Rudie.
Russell Middle School entered robotics categories using Legos, coach Luke McCallister, seventh- and eighth-grade science teacher, said. The school's three teams were winners.
In the RCX Extreme Competition, two teams entered and placed first and second. McCallister said students designed, built and programmed a Lego robot with attachments aimed at completing various tasks required by the competition.
A team competing in Robot Royale Line Follower not only won first, but set a state record for speed.
The goal was to create a robot to follow a line; the winner was the team with the fastest robot. Russell's team broke the 12-second record with a time of 11.8 seconds. The distance traveled was about 20 feet, McCallister said.
Ashland Middle School took second place with its custom-built helmet sensor system which aims to detect potentially concussion-level impacts.
Sensors fit inside a helmet and send data to a student-developed app when a collision exceeds a force threshold, coach Mark Harmon said. The app stores the data and notifies coaches so players can be assessed for possible head injuries.
The team consists of student-athletes, of whom so many have experienced concussions.
'Their goal wasn't to prevent all head injuries — something they acknowledge isn't realistic — but to raise awareness and create a tool to support coaches and teammates in responding more quickly and safely,' Harmon said.
'I couldn't be more proud of these students, not just for the award they earned, but for the heart, effort and real-world thinking they brought to this project,' Harmon said. 'They saw a problem that affected them personally and turned it into an opportunity to help others. That's what true innovation looks like.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
USA Today
21 hours ago
- USA Today
Michigan head coach Sherrone Moore calls Ohio State player best in the country
It's hard for anyone from Michigan to compliment anything about Ohio State, but sometimes you have no choice because of the obvious. That's exactly what happened at Big Ten football media days this past week with Michigan football head coach Sherrone Moore. You can't talk about the Wolverines without also discussing Ohio State, and so it was when Moore was asked about the Buckeyes and the success last year in The Game. The topic of OSU wide receiver Jeremiah Smith came up, and Moore had to relent that he was a pretty special player. "He's probably the best college football player that's out there," Moore told reporters. "He's elite." It's hard to argue with. Not only does Smith pass the eyeball test, the stats also say that he can be a handful. As a freshman, Smith put together arguably the best season by a freshman wide receiver ever, hauling in 76 catches for 1,315 yards and 15 touchdowns. Despite that, Michigan did contain Smith to a degree. He did catch the only touchdown by Ohio State in The Game last year, but finished with just five catches for 35 yards. Smith has already guaranteed the Buckeyes will have a different outcome the next two years, and he'll get a chance to make good on that on November 29 in Ann Arbor. We'll see if Michigan can limit the effectiveness of Smith again this year, or if the star receiver can exact a little revenge in the Big House. Contact/Follow us @BuckeyesWire on X (formerly Twitter) and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Ohio State news, notes and opinion. Follow Phil Harrison on X.
USA Today
a day ago
- USA Today
Sherrone Moore and Chip Lindsey aim for balanced, dynamic Michigan offense in 2025 season
Michigan football fans got a small preview of what the new-look offense might be in the spring game, but not fully. The team was in a split-squad, but not in an A offense vs. B defense sort of way, as the teams were selected via draft. So what Chip Lindsey brings to the table as the Wolverines' new offensive coordinator remains to be seen. What will be interesting is how he meshes with head coach Sherrone Moore's vision. As the former offensive coordinator for the maize and blue himself, Moore's offense was smashmouth, and there's no indication that that will change overall. In fact, as Moore said at Big Ten media days, while 'SMASH!' is the primary directive of that side of the ball, there was a lot more capability we didn't see, situationally -- but this year it might be different. "I think where me and Chip are really similar is just he wanted to do the best for what's best for our offense, what's best for our players," Moore said. "And even when I was calling offenses it wasn't about like I wanted to just -- people say, 'Oh, we just wanted to run the football.' That's not really true. There's times we did, but I wanted to be balanced. Sometimes that balance got out of whack because either I got mad or we wanted to set a tone, and we did that, but it's really about balance. "And people say we didn't throw the ball. J.J. McCarthy was quarterback of the year in the Big Ten, as voted by the coaches. So you can't say that we can't throw the ball when the quarterback is the quarterback of the year. So I really feel strongly that it's all about balance and he wants that." As Moore notes, it's all about balance, but balance doesn't mean equal reps of run and pass or even equal outcomes. But it is about setting the expectation, having prolific production from multiple positions, and keeping a defense off-kilter. And that's something that Lindsey is familiar with. "He's been a guy that's had a 1,000-yard rusher, had a 3,000-yard passer," Moore said. "Fun stat about Chip, he was the offense coordinator at Southern Miss that had 2,000 yard rushers and a 3,000 and a 4,000-yard passer, and I was at Louisville at that time and had like a 1,000 yard rusher and 3,000 yard (passer). So he understands football, he understands the game. "Where we're different, I don't know. There's a lot of different things -- we think about different plays differently. Not necessarily total philosophy, but Chip's not like a, 'Hey, I just want to be an up-tempo, spread guy.' He's a balanced guy and does whatever's best for your program and team. We'll have those elements in the game. We'll be able to do things like that, but we've always had that. We just chose not to do it as much, where we might, where we might not. I think that all depends on the situation in the game." Fans will get their first opportunity to see the new-look Michigan football offense on August 30 when the Wolverines host New Mexico for the 2025 season opener.
USA Today
a day ago
- USA Today
Michigan football's offseason work in weight room sets stage for a bounceback season
One of the underrated components to building an elite college football team year in and year out is the work that's put in during the offseason. And for Michigan football, that's been the secret elixir to the team's success. While rivals drone on about sign stealing and all of that, there were two big factors that led to the Wolverines winning three straight Big Ten titles and a national championship: team culture and gains in the weight room. Called 'the boa constrictor' by Joel Klatt and PJ Fleck, Michigan wore down its opponents and had the talent to keep wearing them down. Last year, the offense was defunct, and the boa constrictor was more of the garden snake variety. But Sherrone Moore hopes that what the maize and blue have done in winter and summer conditioning will return the Wolverines to where they were previously. At Big Ten media days, Moore noted many of the big gains and pertinent losses -- physical evidence of work done in the weight room. "There's so many people who've hit on Bryce. He's gone from 215 to 230, and it's good weight, lowered the body fat percentage, and gained lean muscle mass," Moore said. "A guy like Enow Etta, he's 320 right now, came in at like 250. Andrew Sprague, a guy that's changed his body. Deyvid Palepale, a special shout-out to him. He was a guy that was 370. He's down to 345 or 340, touching 338, and a lot of fat mass is gone. "So there's so many examples throughout the program that have really done a really good job, so that's a special shout-out to Justin Tress' staff and Abigail O'Connor on our nutrition staff and what they've done. It's incredible to watch it, so it's going to be fun to watch them. Big team, strong team, fast team, physical team, but we all got to put it together on the field." Perhaps one unheralded change during the Jim Harbaugh to Sherrone Moore changeover was losing Ben Herbert to the NFL. While the change itself was commented on, the timing of it -- on January 29, 2024 -- creeped into winter conditioning. That meant that his replacement, Justin Tress, had to learn how to direct that aspect of the team on the fly. It still went well for Tress and company, but now, he appears to have truly hit his groove as he enters his second season as the director of strength and conditioning in Ann Arbor. "I think he's taking full control of that team and full control of the locker room and the respect that he has with the players on and off the field," Moore said. "You can see that permeate throughout the staff and throughout him, so he's definitely taking the reins to that crew." We won't have a good idea of the full impact of Tress and his work this offseason when Michigan takes on New Mexico on August 30. The gains will really be shown off later in the season, particularly against Ohio State in the regular season finale at the end of November.
