Four CHS Students Qualify for Technology Students Association Nationals via Remote Competition

The coronavirus pandemic has caused upheaval in everyone’s lives, and not least impacted are students of the Cascade School District. The first cancellations, music concerts, sports, school visitors and school-affiliated trips, quickly escalated to closing of all the buildings for six weeks. The district has put great effort into continuing meals for students by offering lunch sack pick ups at six locations daily. High school staff are working to ensure all seniors are able to complete their course work for graduation. Teachers had one weekend to come up with plans for six weeks’ worth of work students could do from home.

Almost all school activities were left with a void. Technology Student Association (TSA) served as one lucky exception. TSA students at Cascade High School (CHS) and Icicle River Middle School (IRMS) prepared all school year for the state competition, which was scheduled for March 18-21 in SeaTac. Teachers Jodie Tremberth, Teara Dillon, Kim Galreath and David Harvill serve as the advisors.

            King County being a coronavirus hotspot, cancellation of the original TSA conference was disappointing, but not a surprise. Tremberth said, “I was excited that it would be held remotely. It was ambitious for the Washington TSA Board to make that decision, but it was also awesome and inspiring. What better way to show our students that we can be adaptable and resilient to change than to take on such a challenge? Many students in TSA are very comfortable with technology. Therefore, they are the group to step up to the challenge.”

            Quentin Farrell, a CHS freshman competing for his third year, gave his thoughts on why the WTSA conference wasn’t just canceled. “The organizers were semi-prepared, because some events were already early entry. They realized that actually a majority of events could be done that way,” he said “Also, the state officers spend a year preparing for the conference, so they didn’t want to waste all that effort.”

            To suddenly convert a live competition to a remote one required decisive action and work at every level. The couple hundred judges and volunteers overseeing about sixty events were still critical, but their tasks changed, since they would not be in the same room as the competitors. “On our end, we had to first secure a location, on-site, for the students to compete together remotely with live-streaming and fast wi-fi,” explained Tremberth. “This was going to be the IRMS Library. With school closures, the IRMS and Cascade TSA members now had to be independent and compete on their own from home.”

            On March 18^th, trying to be careful of social distancing, Farrell and his teammates Anthony Villalobos, Haakon Scheibler and Evan Butruille made a five-minute, one-take video showcasing their board game for the Board Game Design event. They submitted the video along with twenty-five pages of documentation, including a log of the creation process, schematics of parts and the rules booklet. The following day, Farrell competed with Scheibler in an online Coding event test. Then, joined by Villalobos, the boys solved multiple online capture-the-flag scenarios for the 24-hour Cybersecurity event. It was a mental marathon for these and other TSA members.

            On March 21^st, teammates watched the award ceremony, live-streamed via Facebook, and the Board Game Design team was the only local team to win an award, earning second place and a chance to attend TSA Nationals, scheduled for Nashville in the end of June. This big success also marks Farrell’s third time qualifying for Nationals, and Scheibler’s second time.

            Farrell, as the chief game designer, put in over a hundred hours preparing their board game, entitled “Napoleonic Wars.” It’s a territory-conquering, deck-building game ranging over a map of Europe during the Napoleonic Era. “One of the biggest challenges was making the rules perfect,” said Farrell. “And figuring out how to make the physical items. Like, how are we going to make the board and box stickers or mark the tokens or construct the game box? A lot of things were up in the air, which can be stressful until you solve it.” Villalobos created about fifty original pieces of art for the game, and Scheibler, the team’s historian, helped ensure the game had historical legitimacy.

            The other cause for celebration was for Tremberth, who has accepted the honor of joining the WTSA Board of Directors as an Advisor Representative. She’ll attend Board meetings throughout the year and oversee a number of events at next year’s state conference.

            In the meantime, the four CHS students and one of the advisors might get to fly to Nashville in a few months. When asked about the likelihood of TSA Nationals actually occurring, Farrell was optimistic. He said, speaking as a true techie, “I’m about 55% sure it will happen, 25% sure it will be remote and 20% think it will be canceled.”