Fit Connect wins Rep. Kevin Hern’s 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Oklahoma’s First District

Rep. Kevin Hern has named Reid Sotkin from Jenks High School as the winner of the 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Oklahoma’s First District.

When asked what inspired the creation of Fit Connect, the student said, “I recently started lifting weights in the gym and I saw a need for an app like this because I personally would like to use it. The main inspiration is a technical challenge, I wanted to learn how to make a social media application so I started brainstorming then added my own unique twists and came upon this idea. This is also all in swift which I just started learning this school year so I wanted to test my skills in this new language.”

The 2021 Congressional App Challenge yielded 2,101 fully functioning apps. After eighteen months of disruptions to educational cadences for students everywhere, the Congressional App Challenge came roaring back with 7,174 students registering for this year’s competition. All told, 340 Members of Congress hosted Congressional App Challenges in their districts across 50 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Washington, D.C.

The Congressional App Challenge is an official initiative of the U.S. House of Representatives, where Members of Congress host contests in their districts for middle school and high school students, encouraging them to learn to code and inspiring them to pursue careers in computer science. Each participating Member of Congress selects a winning app from their district, and each winning team is invited to showcase their winning app to Congress during our annual #HouseOfCode festival. The program is a public-private partnership made possible through funding from Omidyar Network, AWS, theCoderSchool, Facebook, Replit, Accenture, and others.

The 2022 Congressional App Challenge will launch in June of 2022, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.