BUTLER TOWNSHIP, Pa. -- One high school in Schuylkill County ended the week in style with boat races that required planning, teamwork, and smarts.
"We wanted some type of project where we design something and then build it," said North Schuylkill High School teacher Kelly Stone. "My students came up with the idea. We started it out, we had two boats the first year, we had eight boats this year, and now we have 24 boats this year."
This is the third annual Dutch Kitchen Kup Regatta at the high school's Don Bricker Natatorium. Over two weeks, students built boats out of cardboard and four rolls of duct tape, then they hit the water and raced.
The regatta involved a lot of meticulous planning from math, physics, STEM, and industrial arts students.
"We had them calculate the weight of the people that were going to be in their boat. We had them calculate the volume of their boat, then calculate how much water was going to be displaced by their boat and do some surface area calculations because they covered their boat with duct tape," said teacher Leah Briggs.
"I think what's important is the teamwork aspect of it," said teacher Renata Blozousky. "Our students are getting the feel of what it's like to be engineers and work together as a group, be given a project and to brainstorm, to be given limited materials and to come up with a solution and they did a great job with it."
"(The secret to winning was) definitely communication and a lot of teamwork," said sophomore Sierra Wishnefsky. "Our boat was really strong. With us being light, we didn't sink down and add any pressure, so we kind of just glided across the water."