It’s summer, so naturally students are spending a lot of time out on the water in kayaks, paddle boards and canoes. If you’re an engineering student, apparently those canoes have to be made out of concrete.
True story: since the 1960s, engineering students across the country have been building concrete canoes to test their engineering excellence and hydrodynamic design skills. Naturally, they started racing them, and now it’s a thing. A big thing.
This summer, those concrete canoe races, formally organized under the American Society of Civil Engineers, splashed their way to BYU for the 37th annual competition. More than 500 civil engineering students and faculty from 50 colleges and universities descended on campus and Utah Lake earlier this month to show off their creatively constructed (and hopefully seaworthy) concrete canoes — and then race them against one another. It was a sight to behold.
“Paddling a concrete canoe is nothing like paddling a regular canoe,” said ASCE’s Maria Lehman. “The smallest amount of wind or a miscalculation takes you way out.”
BYU students Taylor Miskin and Adam Hill, ran the event. Two years ago, when BYU was asked by ASCE to host the 2024 Student Civil Engineering Championship, the BYU faculty chair reached out to Miskin to ask past ASCE chapter officers to create a strong planning committee. The first person he called was Hill, and as co-chairs they have been up to their eyes in concrete canoes ever since.
Miskin and Hill not only organized all the ASCE competitions — which included a Sustainable Solutions event, the Concrete Canoe races and a UESI Surveying competition — but they also raised a significant amount of money from sponsors, so much so that they were able to fully fund the event and provide an excellent experience for all in attendance.
“Taylor and Adam pulled this off in true-blue fashion, impressing the organization and blowing their fundraising goals out of the water,” said BYU Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering’s Brian Blumer.
As far as the concrete race itself goes, BYU’s five-person team, along with their 358-pound concrete canoe they call “The Mustang” took third in the regional competition earlier this year, and finished in the middle of the pack at Utah Lake. The University of Florida won the Concrete Canoe Competition, Georgia Tech took first place in Sustainable Solutions and Purdue University Northwest took home the prize in UESI Surveying.
The team from West Point won the Mike Carnival III Spirit of the Competition Award for literally swimming when they sank. During the Co-Ed Slalom race, their canoe capsized, and the team swam the remaining 300 meters to the finish line, swamped canoe in tow, while the rest of the competitors cheered them on with chants of “U-S-A.”
To read more about the ASCE Concrete Canoe Competition, which was first held in 1988, click here: https://www.asce.org/communities/student-members/conferences/asce-concrete-canoe-competition
Source: Don’t sink, or you’ll have to swim: Collegiate concrete canoe competition (yes, it’s a
