Parker STEM students head to Houston for global robotics championship

Fourth, third and second graders from Wize Computing Academy in Parker are headed to Houston for the FIRST Championship, putting one of Douglas County’s youngest STEM teams on the world’s biggest youth robotics stage. Their third straight qualification gives the trip more weight than a single competition run: it shows an after-school program building repeat success, not just one bright moment.

The championship runs April 29 through May 2, 2026, at the George R. Brown Convention Center. FIRST calls it a culminating, international event for youth robotics and an annual celebration of STEM, and the campus also includes a Discovery Green block party and other activities during championship week. For families in Parker, that means the students are not just traveling to Texas for a trophy. They are stepping into a high-profile event that draws together robotics, coding and engineering from around the world.

At Wize Computing Academy, the students have spent months building dinosaur-themed LEGO robots with sensors, motors and gears, then controlling them from tablets. The work is part of FIRST LEGO League, which serves children ages 5 to 16 and is built around research, problem-solving, coding and engineering. During the 2024-25 SUBMERGED season, teams researched ocean exploration, identified a related problem and programmed robots to complete missions in a 2.5-minute robot game.

Fourth grader Madhav Somani helped capture what this run means to the team when the students learned they had qualified again. The reaction was not routine, and it was not small. For children still early in elementary school, another trip to Houston represents months of testing, rebuilding and learning how to work together under pressure.

The team’s back-to-back-to-back qualification also shows how local support can create a durable STEM pathway in Douglas County. Wize Computing Academy gives the students a place to code and build after school, families keep them connected to the effort, and mentors help turn early curiosity into technical skill. That combination matters in Parker and across the south metro area, where hands-on programs like this can introduce students to engineering long before high school and give them a chance to represent their community on a global stage.