The Technology Student Association is a national organization of students engaged in STEM.

TSA chapters offer students the opportunity to pursue academic challenges among friends with similar goals and interests.

Together, TSA chapter members work on competitive events, learn and apply leadership skills and may attend conferences at the state, regional and national levels.

“I am proud of this group for their hard work and commitment to the team. They took time out of their busy schedules to work on various projects that they presented at the conference. They represented our school and community well,” said Michael May, TSA sponsor at Athens High School.

High schools assemble every April in Alabama to participate in a conference and compete in STEM events.

Athens High attended the Alabama State TSA Conference on April 12 and 13 at the Montgomery Convention Center.

Athens High won the first place plaque for “Most Outstanding School” for the third year in a row.

Students earn points for their team for every top 10 finish they garner during the competition.

A first-place finish will net the team 10 points, second place nine points, third place eight points and so on. The team that scores the most points earns first place.

Athens High scored a school-record 332 points this year.

Athens High students won eight gold medals in events including Engineering Design, Video Game Design, Flight Endurance and Biotechnology Design, among others.

They earned eight gold medals, eight silver medals and 10 bronze medals.

This win comes following the team losing a significant portion of its team to graduation last school year. Seventeen out of 22 new students had not competed at the conference before.

“We lost many seniors from our chapter last year. With only five returning members this year, the chances looked slim that we would repeat as champs,” said May.

Athens Middle School competed at the conference and took home gold and silver medals in 3D CAD. They received second place in digital photography.

May, an engineering design teacher, and Andrew Risner, a math and engineering teacher, are the TSA sponsors at Athens High.

“My co-sponsor, Andrew Risner, is critical to our success as well as Kim Gates feeding students into our program from the middle school. The most critical part of our success is the students. We don’t bring medals and plaques back to Athens unless they put in the work and, in some cases, step outside of their comfort zone to present in front of the judges,” said May. “I’m proud of all of the individual awards, but I’m always most proud of the team award. It’s special to me. I think there is something special about the process in which a group works together toward a common goal. There are many lessons to be learned and applied to future endeavors.”

Athens High senior Adam Biggs is the chapter president. He has placed first in the video game competition for the last three years. Biggs plans to attend Auburn in the fall to eventually study computer science to work for a video game company.

“At the beginning of the year, Adam Biggs, our chapter president, took to the hallways of Athens High to recruit as many students as possible to TSA. We started with five members at the beginning of the year and ended up taking 22 on the trip to Montgomery. If Biggs didn’t recruit those students, we wouldn’t have won this year. I’m proud of everyone. It was a total team effort,” said May.

Kim Gates, a science and design teacher, is the club sponsor at the middle school and brought two students to the conference.

Students interested in joining the Athens High School TSA should contact May or Risner. Athens Middle School students should contact Gates.