Centerville student wins second place in national robotics competition

Webb competed against two other teams from virtual schools around the country. The winners of each grade band were granted trophies and $500 each.

The final round involved teams coding a robot to move cubes on a flat surface to designated locations and parking their robot at the end.

OHVA’s Robotics Club is in its third year and has grown from one middle school team to more than 130 students across grades 4–12. The club is co-led by teachers Ken Sowers of Mentor and Kristie Fetty of Canton.

“What amazes me most is the amount of life skills these students gain — critical thinking, problem-solving, perseverance," Fetty said. “They learn to try, analyze, adjust and try again, and those are lessons that go far beyond robotics.”

The club provides competitive and recreational coding experiences using the Virtual Robotics Toolkit and LEGO Mindstorms. The program aims to enhance technical skills, critical thinking, teamwork and adaptability.

Sowers, a special education teacher and Carter’s robotics coach at OHVA, has been teaching for 16 years and coaching robotics for three. He described Carter as a quiet but positive and dedicated student.

“His ability to keep trying is what helped him a lot,” Sowers said. “He enjoys working with a team and working with others. Whatever the team wants, he’s willing to do.”

Sowers said the robotics club uses a program that simulates a real robot, so it doesn’t always behave the way it should even when students do everything right.

“It really builds that resilience to struggles,” Sowers said.

Erica Webb, Carter’s mother, said she is “super proud” of her son for going to the national competition’s championship in only his second year as part of the club, especially considering he taught himself how to code.

“He’s always just been interested in figuring things out, like puzzle pieces and just figuring out how things work,” Webb said. “It’s stuff that he’s always been interested in since he was little.”

Carter’s interest in coding came from playing games like Minecraft. Eventually, he started watching coding content online and his interest for coding and robotics grew.

Carter said that he doesn’t have any of his own robots yet, but has the LEGO Spike, an educational robot with coding tools for kids, on his wish list.