The team winning the 2025 Sustainability Award at the FRC World Championships.

PARTs (Putnam Area Robotics Team) comprised of students from Winfield High, Hurricane High, Poca High, Buffalo High, and Teays Valley Christian School competed in FIRST Robotics Nationals in Houston, TX on April 16-19. FIRST is a robotics community where each year FIRST teams build and program a robot to perform the season’s challenge, and this year’s ocean-inspired challenge is REEFSCAPE. Throughout the season, students learn engineering and problem-solving skills as they compete for awards, create a team identity, raise funds, hone teamwork skills, and advance appreciation for STEM in their community.

PARTs won the Engineering Inspiration Award at the 2024 FIRST Championship – Johnson Division. This award recognizes a team’s success in science and technology within their school and community. As winners, PARTs automatically qualified for the 2025 Championship and had their registration fee sponsored by NASA.

On May 15th, Optimum, a sponsor of FIRST Robotics Competition, announced five winners, five runners-up, and 18 honorable mentions and awarding grants to support their growth, creativity, and innovation. Six hundred teams from across the globe took part in the competition. PARTs was one of the five winners named and received $2,000 as the winner of the Sustainability Award.

PARTs qualified for the Sustainability Award because its robot demonstrated that the team had developed sustainable practices which result in positive environmental impacts and achieve long-term continuity use. PARTs team leader Angela D. Abbott, a STEM instructor at Winfield Middle School said the team’s use of an old robot brain to do new things was cause for the judges to take notice of the team’s submission.

Other awards were Inclusion Award, Excellence in Technology Award, Community Impact Award, and Inspiration Award.

Prior to winning in Houston, PARTs won regional competitions in Pittsburgh and Sevierville, TN.