East Grand Rapids — On the morning of East Grand Rapids Middle School’s annual regatta, as students were hurriedly constructing boats to launch for the fundraising competition at John Collins Park, eighth-grader Jackson Brandow was feeling confident about the speedboat he and other students in Andi Adams’ class were making.
“Nothing can sink this, not even a naval warship,” Jackson said with aplomb as he and his teammates placed strip after strip of sturdy black tape on the bottom of their cardboard vessel.
His classmate Jack Pfeiffer agreed: “We’ve got this thing in the bag.”
With scores of students throughout the school working on similar projects at the time, what made them so sure of their boat’s success?
“It’s all the tape, how good we built it and all the precious time we spent,” said Jackson. “It’s practically my baby.”
Turns out, that level of confidence was justified. The speedboat managed to stay afloat in the water for a whopping 13 minutes — the benchmark for a successful regatta entry. While others sagged, broke and tipped, the speedboat, piloted by Anna Schultz and Linnea Elzinga, remained effortlessly upright.
The work put in by Jackson and his fellow boat-builders could well mean a competition win for Adams’ class in the speedboat category. The results haven’t been announced yet — they’re expected by the end of the week — but the students were feeling good about their chances.
“It was a little wobbly at first, but we had a good design,” said Linnea. “We stayed up pretty well and we took on no water. We did really good today. I was really happy.”
Linnea mentioned that she was a rower during her seventh-grade regatta year as well.
“It’s a really good time, especially when you’re with another person that’s your friend,” she said. “It’s really something fun you can do to work on your teamwork.”
In addition to the speedboats, each class also built a themed best-in-show entry designed to stay in the water for as long as possible. In that area, Adams’ class didn’t fare quite as well; their Chick-fil-A-inspired boat started taking on water before it reached the finish line, sending rowers Ivan Zylstra and Max Alonzo overboard into Reeds Lake.
Still, it was a successful venture overall, their teacher said.
“It was a fun day,” Adams remarked. “The kids did great. Our speedboat was rock solid.”
Math, Science & Art in Action
The regatta is a school-wide fundraiser hosted by the PTO and involving students in grades 6-8, with classes competing against others in the same grade for honors. Parents donate funds and materials, and the PTO uses the money to support elective courses, clubs and core curriculum classes.
At each grade level, students had plenty of in-class prep time ahead of the regatta. In the weeks leading up to the event, their schoolwork touched on a number of subjects that would come in handy when the time came to design and build their boats.
Science and math teachers covered lessons about buoyancy, geometry, weight distribution, how to make blueprints for their boats, and how best to bring 2D designs into 3D existence.
“In math, they worked with what are called nets, and that’s basically a pattern that you can fold and put together,” science teacher Kevin Vance said. “In science, we actually printed them out on cardstock, and we built mini versions of them.”
During the process, students essentially had a regatta trial run.
“We did testing,” said eighth-grader Leo Wang. “We used paper and we had to make a boat and see how many of these little screws you can put in it before it sinks.”
Leo said the classroom prep made him think more about the structural integrity of his team’s boat.
Cash Ophoff, a student in Vance’s class, said art and math intersected in the construction process, as different boat styles yielded different levels of success in the water.
“There’s a bunch of different designs you can do, and each design affects how fast it can go and how much it can hold,” she said.
Cash’s class chose the Olympics as the theme for its best-in-show boat. Cash said art concepts were helpful when decorating their entry with Olympic torches, flags and more.
Competition & Community
Though it was a competition, the regatta was also a time of collaboration and teamwork, said Adams.
“It’s a great team-building day, and also community-building,” she said. “You’ll see all the parents coming to support it. Anyone walking through will come and watch it because it’s really a great sight to see all the boats.”
EGR high-schoolers came to act as lifeguards and parents volunteered to photograph and time the boat races.
“It’s a whole community event,” Adams said. “It’s awesome.”
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