My Summer Miles wins Rep. James Baird’s 2025 Congressional App Challenge in Indiana’s Fourth District.
Rep. James Baird has named Luke Lehman of Tri-County Junior/Sr. High School as the winner of the 2025 Congressional App Challenge in Indiana’s Fourth District. Their app My Summer Miles utilizes the Strava API to help athletes track their summer training mileage.
When asked what inspired the creation of My Summer Miles, Luke Lehman said, “I was inspired to create My Summer Miles by the challenges within my own cross-country team. Each summer, we have a pre-season challenge where runners who run 100 miles earn a T-shirt, and those who run 200 miles earn an engraved water bottle. We also organize a fundraiser where donors pledge contributions on a per-mile basis. This creates a demand for runners to keep a running total of their mileage to ensure they reach their goals. When I learned about Strava API applications, I decided to fill this need with a new app. When I finished, I even pre-loaded the ‘TCXC Summer Fun’ goal to My Summer Miles, with the exact timeframe and benchmarks that our team set, as a convenience for the other runners on my team.
‘Even without team incentives, high school runners still benefit from setting goals for the summer. Coaches say that summer is what will ‘make or break’ an athlete’s season. I was inspired to make My Summer Miles a public app to increase motivation and accountability for any runner with summer mileage goals. All runners can set a custom goal and range to challenge themselves to grow, even if they do not run competitively. Many My Summer Miles users are actually not Tri-County cross-country runners.”
The 2025 Congressional App Challenge marked another record-setting year for the program. A total of 394 Members of the U.S. House of Representatives hosted App Challenges in their congressional districts, the highest level of participation in the program’s history. More than 13,800 students from across the country participated, submitting over 4,600 original apps focused on real-world challenges ranging from health and accessibility to education, sustainability, and civic engagement.
The Congressional App Challenge is an official initiative of the U.S. House of Representatives that encourages middle school and high school students to learn to code, explore computer science, and build practical technology solutions for their communities. Each participating Member of Congress selects a winning app from their district, and winning teams are invited to showcase their projects to Members of Congress, staff, and industry leaders at the annual #HouseOfCode celebration on Capitol Hill.
The Challenge is proudly bipartisan and reflects a shared commitment to expanding access to STEM education and preparing the next generation of American innovators for the future workforce. The program is a public-private partnership made possible through funding from the Broadcom Foundation, AWS, Infosys Foundation USA, theCoderSchool, Apple, and others.
The 2026 Congressional App Challenge will launch in May, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.