A titanic tragedy took place at Edmond’s Cardboard Boat Regatta, as Harding’s STEM club saw its summer projects sink not far from shore.

The race took place at Lake Arcadia and involved around ten other teen division competitors. These teams were only allowed to use certain materials to aid in the construction of the cardboard boats, and water proof  paints were forbidden.

HCP STEM veterans Jake Burga, Daniel Henthorn, Justin Schmidt and Jordan Johnson constructed their team’s boats. They  used cardboard, duct tape and liquid nails for constructing the crafts.

“The hardest part was actually meeting, because we met in the summer and we all had our own plans,” Johnson said. “The cardboard was good, Mr. Tom was great about providing it and so were the donors, so meeting and being cohesive was the hardest part.”

While some of those involved in designing the boats were new to the experience, one pair of young engineers were reusing ideas that they used for a similar project. “Jake and I did a boat competition in eighth grade.” Henthorn said.

Burga and Henthorn called their ship the Mantis, which was bigger and had a few more edges than the original design it was based off of.

The team’s other boat was fruitier than the rest of the competition. As a group Johnson and Schmidt worked an original design for a ship called the Banana. “I was inspired, by lumberjacks, to have a log floating. Justin then had the idea to make it look like a banana,” Johnson said.

A number of technical issues led to the team’s downfall. The banana’s stabilizers were more difficult to reattach on site than the team expected, and both HCP boats were not ready when the officials called for the race to begin. The resulting rush to catch up with the competition led to the team’s boats taking on too much water too fast.

For a time the team talked about little more than what went wrong, and what they could have done better amongst themselves.

Despite this, HCP STEM was not down for long.  Shortly after retrieving and disposing of their soggy ships, the team began coming up with ideas for next year’s competition.

“An important part of engineering is learning from your mistakes or past experiences and making it better’,” said STEM Sponsor Tom Kindinger. “Engineering involves continuous improvement and after seeing how the other boats were constructed, we will do much better if we enter again next year