Sticky’s Rehab Adventures wins Rep. Harriet Hageman’s 2023 Congressional App Challenge in Wyoming’s At-Large District
Rep. Hageman has named Paige Ramage and Ethan Palmer of Kelly Walsh High School as the winners of the 2023 Congressional App Challenge in Wyoming’s At-Large District.
When asked what inspired the creation of Sticky’s Rehab Adventures, the students said, “This app was inspired by our love of sports. As athletes, we have watched either our friends go through or experienced rehab ourselves due to injuries. It is never easy to miss a competition or, even worse, a whole season due to injury. We wanted to make a tool to help keep athletes out of the training room and in the gym. As we brainstormed ways to solve this, we kept coming back to issues regarding lack of knowledge or action taken by athletes regarding injuries. It’s a lot easier to simply go home after a hard practice rather than spend 10 minutes cooling down or stretching. Additionally, rehab or even just strength-building exercises tend to be boring, and it can be hard to learn what rehab exercises to do. We thought that by making a fun and engaging app, users would be more inclined to take those extra steps to build strength or excel through rehab.
As such, many of the features in Sticky’s Rehab Adventures are centered around the idea of interactive personal growth. To accomplish this, we pooled together knowledge of psychology, kinesiology, and rehabilitation sciences. As we worked more on this app, we realized that the app has value for numerous populations, not just athletes. For example, the elderly can follow strength-building exercises as they become more prone to injury, and musicians could follow these exercises to avoid tendonitis.”
This year’s Challenge saw an unprecedented level of participation, with 374 Members of the House of Representatives hosting competitions, surpassing the previous record of 340. A remarkable 11,334 students from across the United States competed in this year’s Challenge, marking an impressive increase of nearly 1,000 participants compared to the previous record set in 2019. The enthusiasm and creativity these students display is a testament to the growing interest in technology and signal a bright future for American innovation. The surge of ingenuity continued with a whopping 3,645 original applications flooding in, nearly a thousand more than the previous year’s high. This remarkable growth showcases the exceptional talent and innovation within our nation’s youth.
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. This resounding show of bipartisan support emphasizes the critical importance of STEM education in today’s rapidly evolving world. 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, Rise, theCoderSchool, Apple, and others.
The 2024 Congressional App Challenge will launch in May of 2024, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.