Competition Buoys Up OSU Canoe Team

Adam Huffer
Communications Services
Oklahoma State University
(405) 744-6260

 

Jennifer Prichard and Cristin Leimer of the OSU concrete canoe team get set to paddle in the women’s distance race at the ASCE/Master Builders National Concrete Canoe competition on Wisconsin’s Lake Mendota. The race was one of five in which contest participants actually put their crafts through paces. During the coed sprint, the canoes must carry four passengers. OSU won third-place overall in the finals of the competition between more than 250 ASCE student chapters in the United States, Mexico and Canada.

Even when singled-out for exemplary, above-the-bar contributions to the game, those who strive for greatness view any placement short of first as scarcely more than consolatory. That said, the OSU concrete canoe team has vowed to return next summer to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)/Master Builders National Concrete Canoe Competition.

In the finals of the 2002 contest, held June 21-24 in Madison, Wis., students from OSU’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering took third place for the second consecutive year. The students also received a special, one-time recognition for “Technical Innovation,” for the process they pioneered to build their craft. Moreover, OSU has finished in the top five nationally for the past three years including second place in 2000.

To the vexation of the members of the university’s ASCE student chapter, however, the top spot remains elusive.
“I wouldn’t say we’re disappointed because third place is great when you consider over 250 schools in the nation, Canada and Mexico compete,” said Jennifer Prichard, graduate student and project manager for the 2002 squad. “But when we arrive, we take a look at the rest of the field and make our best guess at who’s going to take the competition.

“Usually, our guesses are a lot closer to the final standings than this year,” she said.

The competition consisted of five slalom/endurance and sprint races that account for 30 percent of the total score. The remaining 70 percent was based on the end product (the racing canoe), a three-dimensional exhibit detailing the design and construction of the canoe, an oral business presentation through which teams market their canoe’s design and a written design proposal. Each canoe also underwent a floatation test in which students proved their crafts indeed float. Variables such as concrete mix, reinforcement, hull design and innovative features were also considered.

Clemson University took the national title. Quebec institution Universite Laval finished second, just a point-and-a-half ahead of OSU. Western Kentucky University and the host, University of Wisconsin, Madison, rounded out the top five.

Among the 25-member field of finalists, the OSU team placed eighth and better in every category with its canoe, “The Difference,” recording highest placement in display exhibit (second) and end product (third). Resembling concrete in sidewalks only by definition, the craft’s composition included a mixture of portland cement, water and the latex additive laticrete. Tiny glass bubbles, or microspheres, and a lightweight bonding agent, mirolite, replaced the standard aggregates gravel and sand. The result was a canoe with a hull just 5/8” thick measuring almost 22 ft. and tipping the scales at 110 pounds.

In 2001, OSU became the first school in the nation to construct its canoe using an injection system rather than casting by hand. Successful fabrication with the process, conceptualized prior to the 2000 contest by former lead engineer Scott Rutledge and current team member James Diver, required four initial attempts.

“A lot of the perennial powers have tried it, but we became the first to successfully inject concrete between two forms to build a canoe,” Prichard said. “Both surfaces are extremely smooth; in fact, the finished product, out-of-the form, required so little finishing work this year, we left the interior hull unpainted, and that seemed to impress the judges.”

“We cut the fabrication time down to two hours from 13 hours last year,” she said. “When we cast by hand, we spent as many as 300 hours alone on the finishing work, but now we are able to produce a canoe extremely quickly, easily and at a much lower cost.”

The national ASCE organization awarded the team the innovation award after the scholars duplicated and enhanced the process for this year’s canoe. According to Dr. Robert Hughes, emeritus professor and the team’s faculty adviser, representatives of competition sponsor Master Builders called it the most dramatic improvement in canoe construction technology in the contest’s history. The students’ development of the process will be the subject of a feature in the society’s upcoming national publication.

“When we uncovered our canoe for judging, it really created a buzz,” Prichard said. “Unlike last year when we had just a few, everyone swarmed around it and asked us a million questions about the process, and a contest judge talked with us for quite a while about trying to develop the process for industrial uses.
“We were very proud to get an award that they came up with just for our team for going the extra mile and being innovative with the use of concrete,” Prichard said.
The team earned its sixth consecutive bid to the finals after dominating the ASCE Mid-Continent Conference regional competition in Norman in April, the 11th time in 15 years OSU students have secured a spot by capturing the regional title.

Students attending nationals included Aaron Finley, Stephanie Woods, Cristin Leimer, Christina Featherston, Jonathan Heisey, Josh Dougherty, Doug Schrantz, Chad McKaskle, Meg Meyerhoeffer, Rebecca Ward, Diver and Prichard. Divided into sub-teams and working in areas such as construction, mix design and hull design, all made contributions in design and construction. In addition to presenting the craft, some paddled it in the competition races. “I think our team’s performance was outstanding,” said Prichard, who due to graduation next month has participated in the enrichment endeavor for the fifth and final year. “We had several students new to the project, but they really stepped up and came through when the team needed them.

“Hopefully, they’ll keep up with it and maintain our tradition.”

OSU’s participation in the competition this year was supported by Conoco, Mercury Marine, Poe Engineering of Tulsa, Koch Industries, Brawley Engineering of Oklahoma City, Burns and McDonnell, the Oklahoma chapters of the American Concrete Institute and the American Society of Civil Engineers and School of Civil and Environmental Engineering alumni.

For information about this page, send e-mail to Adam Huffer.

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