AOMC hosts first BattleBots Competition in Marietta

MARIETTA, Ohio (WTAP) -The Appalachian Ohio Manufacturing Coalition (AOMC) hosted its first-ever BattleBots competition in Marietta [May 7th, 2026], bringing together students from across Southeast Ohio for a hands-on STEM challenge.

AOMC Associate Director Cecily Fyffe said the event is part of a broader effort to connect students with manufacturing careers in the region and was made possible through grant funding from Ohio Valley Employment Resources through OhioMeansJobs.

“With AOMC, one of our main goals is to work with the manufacturers in our region and help with the labor force,” Fyffe said. “The students learn about jobs in manufacturing, which includes STEM and hands-on activities, and we show them the opportunities within our region so they can stay here and get good jobs here.”

Fyffe said AOMC provided each participating school with what it needed to start a BattleBots program, and this marked the first competition for the new initiative.

Schools represented included Fort Frye, Belpre, Waterford, Warren, Shenandoah, Caldwell, Morgan, and homeschooled students participating through Building Bridges to Careers.

Teams brought their robots into a small arena built by Micromachines and competed in matches that ended when a robot could no longer operate properly or when the three-minute time limit expired.

Fort Frye High School teacher Jarvis Huck said students divided responsibilities between design and hands-on engineering, building their robots from the ground up using real-world tools.

Students said the experience helped reinforce why STEM skills matter in the workforce.

“STEM is very important for students to learn because a lot of jobs are STEM-related, and it’s also good to have basic STEM skills for the workforce,” Nick Bishop said.

Braun Doak said the competition gave them a chance to apply classroom concepts in a practical setting.

“I plan to be an electrical engineer, so I got to work with some components I could see using in the future,” Braun Doak said. “It was fun to put my ideas on the computer, model them, print them out, and see if they actually work in the real world rather than just mathematically or hypothetically on a computer. It’s been a very good experience for me, and I’ve enjoyed spending time with my friends outside of class, so it’s been a good time.”

Huck said events like this build confidence by pushing students to solve problems without a single “right” answer.

“To me, it’s just teaching kids how to think,” Huck said. “A lot of times, people just want to be told the answer, but with this, there’s not really an answer. It’s a very open-ended question, so you’ve got to strategize and think about it, and I think that’s what STEM does—it makes you think outside the box.”