Students in Coach Kia Dixon’s Math & Models class got a little wet Wednesday afternoon, as they raced the cardboard boats they had built as a class project. Laughter and yells echoed off the walls at the Vernon College indoor pool, as the students put their boats in the water.
There were four heats and from the eight boats that competed, only two – “The Senior Sleepover” and “The Motor-Boaters” – managed to stay together long enough to a complete lap in the pool and reach the finals. Neither boat managed to withstand another lap, as they both collapsed. However, “The Motor-Boaters” managed to stay afloat the longest and was declared the winner.
Members of the team that constructed “The Motor-Boaters” were Case Fleming, Kell Castleberry, Gavin Pierce and Cross Durham. “The Senior Sleepover” finished second and building that boat were Caydence Conkling, Juanita Salazar, Vincent Houck and Terra Stanfill. Third place went to “Lightning McQueen,” which was built by Rilynn Mason, Johnny Pruitt, Amya Chavira and Kirrah Taylor.
“In the past, my Math and Models class has built a city to scale using cardboard, but this year I let the class vote on building a city or building a boat, and they all voted for the boat,” Coach Dixon said. “They used math, architecture principles and thought about their design to build their boat.
“All of the work was done in the classroom,” she continued. “I think they really enjoyed it and they were ready to race.”
Two of the girls who helped build “Mario Car” definitely enjoyed the project.
“I think this was definitely more fun that building a city would have been,” said Annaka Rejino. “It was a fun class-bonding type of thing.”
Antw’nyai Taylor explained the idea behind the Mario Car. “We were going do something with a Halloween theme, but then the races were moved to the day after Halloween, so we just went with a race car from Mario. We could only use tape to put it together, and we spray painted ours.”
Rounding out the “Mario Car” team and handling the rowing in the race were Cirsten Ivy and Jaylie Freeman.
Jazmin Trejo helped build “Fern” said her group went for a practical approach. “We made it in a canoe shape,” she said.
Other members of the “Fern” team were Lily Balderas, Ulices Trejo, and Merci Sandoval.
The other three teams from the class were: “SS Booger” – Jaxon Cochran, Kylen Hammonds, Kierra Stolle and Christian Chavarria; “Zero” – Electra Boatman, Ariel Croxton, Jacob Embrey and Kaiden Ortiz; and “BLM” – Christian Martinez, Rayven Skidmore, Brinlee Lane and Jaden Martinez.