Updated May 21 with results of the competition
Students from Festus High School are celebrating a top-5 finish at the American Rocketry Challenge on Sunday.
The team, led by teacher Devin Lorenz, placed fourth of the more than 900 teams at the competition, which required students to build a rocket that could carry an egg to a specific altitude, stay airborne for a period of time, and then bring the egg safely back to the ground.
The result earned each team member $1,000, plus another $1,000 for the school. They also will get to participate in NASA’s Student Launch Challenge.
Original story from May 13
Hundreds of teenagers from across the country will be in Washington, D.C., this weekend to launch model rockets — and more than a dozen kids from the St. Louis area are among them.
Teams from Fox and Festus high schools, and Seckman Middle School, are among the finalists in the American Rocketry Challenge. The competition requires students to build a rocket that can carry an egg to a specific altitude, stay airborne for a period of time, then bring the egg safely back to the ground.
“It’s designed to give an outlet to kids who are interested in STEM and to inspire kids who don't yet know they're interested in STEM,” said Eric Fanning, president and CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association, a sponsor of the competition.
Junior Erin Anderson is one of those students who is already interested in a career in science – her dream job is to be an aerospace engineer. Anderson competed in the finals last year, but the team at Northwest High School, in a neighboring district, went dormant when its sponsor left. This year, she is one of the captains of the Fox team, acting as a “third teacher.”
“The coolest thing is all the terminologies, because it’s just cool to use,” Anderson said, adding that she likes to show off in physics class by “using the big fancy terms, and the teacher is trying to teach the other kids the layman’s terms.”
Like Anderson, Jack Kamradt is thinking about studying engineering in college. Kamradt, a seventh grader at Seckman Middle School, got interested in rockets in second grade and was part of the Seckman team last year.
That team didn’t make it to the finals.
“We messed up a little bit because some of the information we read wrong, so we built our rockets a little odd,” Kamradt said. “But we were able to learn off of the stuff that we tried last year that didn't work. We have new designs for our nose cones and fins.”
Kamradt said even if his team doesn’t win the national competition, he’ll still have fun learning from other teams and getting to see the monuments.
Unlike Anderson and Kamradt, Fox sophomore Paige Metcalf was not into rockets when she joined the team.
“Before, I was more into biology and stuff,” she said. “Math is just not my strong suit.”
But Metcalf enjoyed having the coach, Thomas Laybourn, as her chemistry teacher and said that made it a “no-brainer” when he asked her to participate.
“Now I feel a lot more comfortable with this sort of STEM, so that’s pretty cool,” she said, adding that she will “absolutely” join the team next year as well.
It’s the first year that Fox High School has fielded a team in the competition, and Laybourn says he is stunned it's among the 100 to attend the national finals.
“But I just knew they could do it. I just didn't know they could do it this effectively,” he said.
Laybourn, who learned about the competition at a science convention, said even students who don't go into STEM fields in college or beyond benefit from it.
“They’re learning problem solving. They’re learning leadership. More than anything, they’re learning confidence,” he said. “The confidence level that I see in these guys from when they start out to just the end of the year is mind blowing, and so rewarding.”
In addition to the students from Fox, Seckman and Festus, Center High School in Kansas City and Richards R5 School District in West Plains, Missouri, will also be in Washington this weekend.
The winner of the national finals gets to compete in the international challenge in England. In addition, the top 25 teams get to attend NASA’s student rocket challenge.
