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Twenty Edgewood Middle School students will compete in Saturday’s Canal Days in Winona Lake.
Abbi Richcreek, STEM coach and engineering and robotics instructor, and Alexi Demopoulos, biology and science instructor, coach the students.
Richcreek said this is the fifth year Edgewood students have built cardboard boats to compete in Canal Days and they have about the same amount of students and teams participating as last year. The 20 students are split up into seven teams.
Students started building the boats Aug. 10 and they’ve been working every week day since then. They have to keep the boats within the constraints of the cardboard boat regatta rules, including having boats that don’t exceed 5 feet wide by 9 feet long.
As Edgewood is a STEM-certified school, they want to make sure they add and offer STEM activities for the students to enjoy, she said.
Medtronic provided $2,000 worth of duct tape and Welch Packaging Group provided big cardboard pieces.
Richcreek said while building the cardboard boats, students learn problem solving, communication and collaboration.
“We are displaying our work to the public so that means even more because everyone is going to be watching, so if their boats sink” the public will see that, she said. It is a great day to display their work and test it.
In years past, there have been at least one boat that has sank.
Richcreek said she doesn’t think some students realize how buoyant they need to make the boat and the surface area they need to cover once they get inside of it.
“And the other thing that’s surprising is a lot of students haven’t rowed before. We’ve practiced just in class on chairs, but to actually apply it is kind of a shock to them about how much, how many muscles they actually have to use. So it is again about problem solving, about how they pull the oar to get the most efficient distance with their row,” she said.
Half of the students are repeat participants, so “it seems like once they do it, they do it again. So I think it is a great project and everyone really enjoys it. And family really gets involved by cheering on their favorite team,” she said. “Our goal is no one sinks.”
Eighth-grader Brenna Overman said this is her second year she’s built a cardboard boat for Canal Days. She likes to do creative stuff. She did it last year and really liked it.
Overman said she and teammates Kaitlyn Vaughan and Lydia Hagenbuch, both eighth-graders, are trying to get Best in Show. Their boat, “The Zookeepers,” is going to be like a zookeeper’s jeep-type boat and they’re going to dress up like zookeepers.
Overman said as far as Saturday, besides trying to get Best in Show, they’re also trying to not to sink.
Hagenbuch said this is the first year she’s built a boat for Canal Days. She said Overman wanted to make a boat with her teammates. Hagenbuch said it’s really fun and would recommend it because they get to meet new people and do things they may not have been able to do before.
Hagenbuch said building the cardboard boat is harder than it looks. She hopes not to get wet Saturday.
Vaughan wanted to participate in Canal Days last year, but couldn’t because she had a conflict and she wanted to do it with a friend. She is learning how to focus on things and getting them done. She thinks making the boat is really fun and gives her a new viewpoint of building things.
This is seventh-grader Ellie Macke’s second year participating in Canal Days, but first doing it with Edgewood. She decided to do it again this year because she had fun last year.
Eighth-grader Braxton Manns said this is his second year. He made a lot of memories last year, so he decided to participate this year as well. One thing he learned from last year is a lot of duct tape helps keep the boat from sinking.
Seventh-grader Caleb Watson said this his first year participating in Canal Days. He really likes building things out of cardboard and he thought participating in the event would be fun.
Seventh-grader Cora Byrd is a teammate of Watson’s. She said their team name is the Axolotls because the team, which also consists of seventh-graders Patrick Kane and Finley Owens, love Axolotls and they’re aquatic animals.
Byrd said one reason she decided to build the boat at Edgewood is because she likes building things. The goals for Saturday is to have fun and to try to win at least one award. If they don’t win anything, they want to have fun trying.
