The Keota High School Coding Club has already taken big leaps forward in its first months as a group.

During the previous school year, Keota coding teacher Angela Conrad received a grant from the Amazon Future Engineers program. Conrad began teaching the first coding and intro to computer science class and started the Keota Coding Club at the beginning of this school year. The class has been well received with 10 students currently enrolled in the program. For their first project, students in the club created a video game from scratch using Unity Platform and C# tutorials. The club competed in their first ever competition earlier this month by entering their project in the bits division at the Byte Jam competition held at Indian Hills Community College in Ottumwa. The final results saw the students from Keota High School take home first place. Keota Junior Phoebe Huber shares her reaction after hearing the final results, “It was really surprising because I remember we were sitting in the bleachers and they read third then second then they read first. They got to second and all of our team kind of looked at each other and we were like ‘We didn’t place.’ ‘We didn’t do good.’ And then we just heard our name and our coach yelled, the two boys that were on our team kind of yelled and me and the other girl on our team looked at each other and I was almost in tears because it was just so exciting.”

Huber added that she hopes the club can compete in the upper division next year and that being a part of the club has encouraged her to enroll in a dual-credit class for coding and computer science. She urges all students to consider joining as a way to have fun, get to know others and participate in something new. Hear more from Huber during Monday’s JJ Nichting Company In Touch with Southeast Iowa program.