Twenty-three seventh- and eighth-grade Edgewood Middle School students split up into seven teams and built cardboard boats to participate in the regatta race during Saturday’s Canal Days in Winona Lake.
Some of the teams have two to four members, but they all know only two members can be in the boat and paddle during the race, said Project Lead The Way teacher Abbi Richcreek, who, with Edgewood science teacher Alexi Demopoulos, coached the students.
The project was open to any Edgewood student who wanted to participate.
More students are participating this year than last year and there is one more team. Seventeen students made six teams last year. Richcreek said this year, about three-fourths of the students that are participating are seventh-graders. There are also some students who participated in last year’s event.
Richcreek said there was promotion this year about the project to get more students involved. On the first day of school, a skit was done during an assembly to encourage more student participation.
Students started working on their boats on the second day of school and continued after every school day since. Friday, Richcreek said students will load the boats up and get ready for Saturday’s Canal Days.
The first step in creating the boats was design work. Students did design sheets and made model boats.
To help adhere to the size guidelines for the regatta race, there was masking tape laid out on the hallway floor in the maximum dimensions for boats. This was so students could check how their boats compared to the size guidelines.
Richcreek said students were encouraged to have simple and solid designs to make sure the boats float.
For the project, Richcreek said the cardboard was donated. Medtronic also donated $1,000 for duct tape.
Last year, two of the six student-made boats ended up sinking. Richcreek said this year, “We have really encouraged solid structure.”
There was one group that wanted to do a canoe-type boat. While the students were encouraged to be creative, Richcreek said students were encouraged to use past experiences from others for guidance to make a better design.

    Abby Richard (L) and Mya Williamson (R) work on their cardboard boat Frozen for Saturday’s Canal Days. Photo by Jackie Gorski, Times-Union
  

One goal for Saturday, according to Richcreek, is for everyone to have a good time and no one sinks. If a boat does sink, she said it’s fine and the students can make a better design next year. She said it’s OK to fail if the students learn from it.
Student Lincoln Rak said he likes to engineer and make stuff and he lives on a lake, so he thought he’d be good at making the cardboard boats and he’d give it a try. He thinks the building of his team’s boat, Titanic, is going well so far. On Thursday, they were on the last phase of the build and it was being spray-painted.
For the idea of the boat, he and teammates Christopher Sanchez, Jayden Henthorn and Ryan England were thinking about boats and thought the Titanic would be a good idea to go with. Rak hopes to win Saturday and for the boat not to sink during Canal Days.
Students Mya Williamson and Abby Richard are building boats for a second year. Richard said she had a lot of fun last year, so she decided to do it again. She knew from last year she was going to do it again and try to do better.
Williamson said she wanted to see if she could make the boat she made last year any better.
They said some of the things they learned from last year included not making the boat too thin as it’ll tip over. They both said they hope to get some fun memories out of Saturday and get across the canal.
Their boat is called Frozen because Williamson said they were thinking about Disney.
Student Lorelei Powers said this is the first year she’s built cardboard boats for Canal Days. She thought it was interesting and didn’t have anything to do after school, so she decided to try it this year.
Student Zoey Gooch, who is a teammate with Powers, said she decided to participate in the project this year because she enjoys exploring or creating things.
Powers said her and Gooch’s team’s first design for boat Rapid Robots didn’t work out and had to be reworked.
Powers said her team just came up with the idea of Rapid Robots on the spot. Besides Powers and Gooch, the Rapid Robots team is also made up of Noah Huff and Wyatt Trump.