WJ Kudos

22 of 68 teams from all of the UMCP Engineering 101 class sections qualified to compete. WJ had 3 teams who qualified but WJ "Team Wild Caps" had a fan blow out on Saturday the 10th during practice runs and were not ready for the competition despite a valiant effort to rebuild their entire machine by Monday morning. WJ's "The Lovercraft" team won 1st place in the craftsmanship award, and 8th place overall; WJ's "The Domesticated Hovercats" won 11th place overall. Participants were: "The Lovercraft:" Amanda Shekarchi, Fletcher Tollefson, Gavin Kaplan, Modibo Camara, Caldwell Clarke, Seth Gottlieb, Jacqueline Maranville, Danny Pyle & Anis Amrane; "The Domesticated Hovercats:" Jimmy Parker, Andy Miller, Sarah Breen, Mary Kate Macedonia, Konrad Feng, Marty Shay, Julie Shekarchi, Matt Saphire, Peter Kosogof & Josh Shields; "Team Wild Caps:" Chris Wong, Roey Reiss, Madison Chase, Baris Gokpinar, Max Ivers, Jenny Xiao, Aditya Srinivas, Evan Kerich, Ben Hobson & Elad Covaliu. These students had the tremendous support of WJ staff. Kevin Daney and Kelly Dunston provided countless hours of advice and supervision during the construction phase of the project. Mike Richards provided tutoring support during the physics portion of the class. A huge thank you to the building services staff, especially Will Simon, who would check in on the late nights to make sure the students were ok, and to ITSS Sue Reber, who made sure that the WJ computers were able to recognize the programmable Arduino computer board, which is the brain of the hovercraft. Also, thanks to the WJ Ed Foundation for providing funds for the extra materials purchased to ensure that WJ students had the same equipment as their U of MD counterparts. And lastly, thanks to Mrs. Baker who enthusiastically embraced this course and worked to ensure that students had access to whatever they needed... even access to the lab at 5:30 on Sunday night.