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Most weeks the main story here is about something that happened a long time ago. This one is still going on, and it started when a robotics coach moved up from Georgia. So this week is about STREAMWORKS, the underwater robots, and how a town four hundred miles from the ocean ended up hosting the world.

In today's post:

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Most of us know the Kingsport Aquatic Center as the place with the lazy river, the swim lessons, and the swim meets that eat an entire Saturday. You drop the kids off. You find a seat on the bleachers. You leave smelling like chlorine.

In June 2024, it hosted a world championship.

Roughly eighty student teams from seventeen countries came to Meadowview Parkway that week to drop underwater robots they had designed and built themselves into that pool. More than a thousand people in all. One team from Scotland spent twenty-two hours getting here. It was the second time in five years the MATE ROV World Championship had picked Kingsport, a town about four hundred miles from the nearest salt water.

That last part takes some explaining.

MATE stands for Marine Advanced Technology Education. The competition started in 2001 out of a center at Monterey Peninsula College in California, and the original idea was practical: train students for the jobs running the remotely operated vehicles, ROVs, that service offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Over the years it grew into a global contest for anybody who wants to work in ocean technology. It has always lived near the coast.

So how did it end up in Kingsport?

It starts with Dennis Courtney. He was running a robotics program in Georgia for kids who did not usually get a shot at that kind of thing when Eastman recruited him to Kingsport, programs and all. The new outfit was called STREAMWORKS, and Eastman backed it.

Eastman already had a working relationship with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Courtney went up there and watched scientists use ROVs to study how microplastics get into the food chain. He came home and cold-called the MATE Center to ask whether they had any interest in a town in the mountains of East Tennessee. MATE's Jill Zande said she was open to it.

Kingsport held a regional at the Aquatic Center in 2018, and teams from Dobyns-Bennett and D-B EXCEL both advanced to the international competition in Washington State. Then MIT, which had been penciled in to host 2019, decided 2021 suited it better. The slot opened. Kingsport took it.

MATE rewrote the missions to fit the place. Instead of ocean work, the 2019 teams handled simulated jobs set on Boone Lake, Boone Dam, and the South Fork of the Holston. Repairing a dam. Surveying a river ecosystem. Pulling a Civil War cannon off a river bottom. The teams got their assignment the way a contractor would, as a request for proposals from Eastman.

After the pandemic wiped out 2020, ETSU hosted the 2021 championship in Johnson City. In 2024 the whole thing came back to Kingsport. When MATE's leadership was asked why, the answer was the pool. An Olympic-size competition pool is what you need when eighty teams all want their turn underwater. Visit Kingsport put the week's economic impact at close to two million dollars.

The robots are the part people photograph. The competition is built around something else. Every team runs as a company. Somebody is the CEO. Somebody handles marketing. Each team writes a technical document, builds a display, and pitches its vehicle to a panel of judges like it is trying to land a contract. A well-driven robot with a bad presentation loses.

Now look at who runs the program today.

Gavin Bentley was a D-B EXCEL sophomore when he built an ROV in a classroom in 2018. He went on to become a program coordinator at STREAMWORKS. Makaila Freeman was the CEO of Dobyns-Bennett's 2018 team and was on the STREAMWORKS staff by the next spring. Quintin Folkner, another student from those first local teams, is now the assistant coordinator for the MATE Appalachian Highlands regional. The kids who competed in the first Kingsport regional are the adults running it.

STREAMWORKS has kept building. It hosts the Appalachian Highlands regional every spring, now at ETSU, which sends local teams on toward the world championship. It also runs the Robot Drone League, which held its national championship at ETSU this past March with teams from across the country. The 2027 MATE World Championship heads to Federal Way, Washington. The road there starts here in the spring.

Next time you're in the bleachers at the Aquatic Center, waiting out a swim meet, look at the deep end.

The world has competed in that water. Twice.

A few things worth getting off your couch for:

Downtown Kingsport Restaurant Week | Through Sunday, Oct. 11 | Downtown Kingsport Last weekend for the specials at downtown's restaurants and bars, presented with Zach Bites. Check in at participating spots on the digital passport for a shot at prizes. Details

Kingsport Farmers Market | Saturday, Oct. 10, 7 AM | 308 Clinchfield St. Produce, baked goods, crafts, and live music at Center and Clinchfield, free to walk. The season runs through November 28, so the Saturdays are starting to count down. Details

Wire Sculpture Class | Sunday, Oct. 11, 12 PM | The Inventor Center, 118 Shelby St. A Sunday afternoon of building something with your hands downtown. Good follow-up to this week's story. Details

Presented by In the Tri. See every Kingsport event this weekend.

One place in this town doing the work.

STREAMWORKS The Kingsport nonprofit behind this week's story runs robotics and drone programs for kids from kindergarten through high school, plus summer camps and workshops for teachers. Its regional competitions run on volunteers, from judges to the people keeping score on the pool deck. If you have a kid who takes things apart, or a skill you could teach one, start here. Details

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Speaking of kids who build things.

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The tree house has power. Most of us grew up with a flashlight.

See the full listing for 4322 Stagecoach Road, then come back and vote.

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That's it for this week. Thanks for trusting me with your inbox. Let's tell some stories.

Talk soon,

Ryan