Concrete canoe team wins second national championship
 he second time around proved twice as nice for
the College of Engineering’s Concrete Canoe team. The team successfully
defended its national championship in June, triumphing over 21 other
universities in three days of competition held near Washington, D.C.
The canoe, built by Department of Civil and Environmental
Engineering students and dubbed “Rock Solid,” followed in
the footsteps of the “Chequamegon,” which won last year’s
competition in Philadelphia. The “Rock Solid” canoe had
won regional competition held in Milwaukee in May.
“It was pretty unbelievable,” said Linda
Vanevenhoven, a civil engineering major and paddler for the team, of
the second national championship in a row. “You hoped for it,
but it was unexpected. It was pretty sweet.”
The competition challenges student teams to design,
build and race canoes made primarily out of concrete. Student teams
not only race the canoes during the competition, but must also present
academic papers on their material and construction methods, make a business
presentation detailing their canoe design, and pass a flotation test
to prove the boat can float horizontally when filled with water.
The UW-Madison team accomplished its victory with
top grades in each of the four major cate-gories: Second place for the
business presentation and final canoe product; third place overall in
the races and academic paper. It was the only team to finish in the
top five in each of the major categories.
The races saw the UW-Madison team finish fourth or
higher in each of the individual competitions—men’s and
women’s sprints, men’s and women’s endurance races,
and the co-ed sprint. As a highlight, the women’s sprint team,
which included paddlers Vanevenhoven and Amy Roth, finished first, beating
longtime canoe heavyweight Clemson University in that race for the first
time in several years.
The UW-Madison team spent the better part of the
2003-04 academic year designing, testing and building its canoe in the
newly constructed Engineering Centers Building. The finished canoe weighed
180 pounds and measured four inches short of 22 feet. Co-chairs Shannon
Pierce and Preston Tokheim led this year’s team.
Along with the win comes a first-place trophy and
$5,000. A Canadian school, Universite Laval, finished second, followed
by the University of Alabama at Huntsville.
The American Society of Civil Engineers and Master
Builders, Inc., a manufacturer of materials used in the concrete industry,
sponsor the canoe competition.
|
| |
