DALLAS TWP. – The mechanized Mountaineers are reaching new heights in the world of competitive student robotics.
At its meeting May 11, the Dallas school board held a ceremony celebrating its newly expanded robotics team. It awarded certificates of distinction to the student team members and had them give a technical demonstration of a robot they designed to the public.
Dallas Middle School science teacher Doug Markgraf, the Mountaineers’ coach, said he was proud of his work to help establish the team.
“I was given the opportunity, I was given the inkling that this kind of robotics program would be possible at this district,” Markgraf said, recounting when he first joined Dallas. “And so, I’m happy to report that it’s working out pretty well lately.”
Superintendent Thomas Duffy, speaking about the team’s presentation, said Markgraf first pitched him on developing a robotics program for the school district in his job interview.
“He (Markgraf) came to us several years ago, he said ‘this is my vision, this is something that I can bring to the district,’” Duffy said. “And it came to fruition in a big way.”
The Mountaineers have robotics teams competing in two leagues organized by the international youth robotics league, For Inspiration and and Recognition of Science and Technology, or FIRST. Dallas has one team compete in the FIRST Lego League, which is for students in kindergarten through eighth grade; and another team, newly formed this year, competing in the FIRST Tech Challenge, which is for students in seventh grade through 12th grade.
The Mountaineers robotics team offer a technical demonstration of their FIRST Tech Challenge Robot at the Dallas school board meeting on May 11, 2026. (CHRISTOPHER DOYLE/STAFF PHOTO)
The Mountaineers robotics team offer a technical demonstration of their FIRST Tech Challenge Robot at the Dallas school board meeting on May 11, 2026. (CHRISTOPHER DOYLE/STAFF PHOTO)
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The Mountaineers robotics team offer a technical demonstration of their FIRST Tech Challenge Robot at the Dallas school board meeting on May 11, 2026. (CHRISTOPHER DOYLE/STAFF PHOTO)
Nico Cella, a junior, said he has participated in other robotics programs with Markgraf and has taken an interest in all the diverse fields that working on robotics touches. He said he has learned more about programming, computer-aided design, and the hands-on work required to build the robot.
“I just find everything very interesting about it,” Cella said.
Aidan Dyer, also a junior, said robotics also captured his interest and said he thought it would help him prepare to apply for college. While he said he planned to have a career in business and marketing, Dyer said he believed the skills he developed on the team would be applicable to a number of careers.
“It would be good for marketing, because it would show that I learned problem-solving skills,” Dyer said.
The robot on display May 11 competed in the FIRST Tech Challenge. This year, teams in the FIRST Tech Challenge were tasked with building a robot that collects plastic balls and shoots them into targets stationed within an arena. Students can operate the robot manually for much of the competition, piloting it with a remote control, but the robot must also be able to operate as an automaton – using its own computer program and sensors to autonomously locate balls and fire them into the target itself.
In recent years, the FIRST Tech Challenge has become more popular throughout Northeastern Pennsylvania. The Wilkes-Barre Area robotics team, which had a FIRST Tech team, hosted a robot rally for schools across the region in April.
The Mountaineers’ robot, a boxy machine that uses rollers and pins, a chute, and a wheel to collect and fire balls, was built largely through 3D printing. Forming their team relatively late in the season, students had to work under intense time pressure to get their robot up to spec. The team eventually placed 16th of 32 teams, something the team considered a “huge win” for the program’s rookie year.
David Colburn, who worked with team member Owen Wielgosz among his fellow students and coaches to lead 3D-printing efforts, said the the program helped him cultivate life lessons and hone his engineering acumen.
“I got a lot of leadership skills,” Colburn said. “I also learned a lot of the engineering skills, I got a lot of CAD…and programming.”
Statewide Success
The Mountaineers’ robotics team has met extraordinary success in the “STEM Design Challenge,” a competition hosted by the Alleghany Intermediate Unit that requires students to use the building toy K’Nex to build something to address an environmental problem. The Dallas team, Markgraf said, have qualified for state-level competition the last four years.
Drue Paden, a seventh grade student and a member of Dallas’ team, said he and his teammates built a “plasti-catcher,” which would automatically collect other machines’ microplastic pollution and recycle it as plastic pellets. With that machine, Paden and his teammates, Eli Lanfrank and Shiraz Tahilramani, were awarded a perfect score in the STEM Design Challenge competition on May 8. The trio finished ahead of around 3,000 other students who competed and took home second place of all teams statewide.
Paden, while years away from a college decision, does have plans for the future. He said he has ambitions of studying biochemistry at Harvard or Yale University.
Speaking after the meeting, Markgraf said he hoped the district’s robotics program worked to kindle students’ creativity and put them on the path to success.
“I wanted to launch the team, because it’s incredibly important to have our students and students all over the country feel like they’re capable of learning and becoming engineers,” Markgraf said.