Concrete Canoe Team Wins Seventh National Title
Cal Poly was one of 20 university teams from the U.S. and Canada that had advanced to the finals from a series of ASCE regional qualifiers.
The defending national champion Cal Poly concrete canoe team was the team to beat at the 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers Concrete Canoe Competition at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville on June 10-12 — and their repeat became official at Monday’s awards presentation at the end of the third day of competition.
“We just won our seventh national title!” said civil engineering senior Heather Migdal, the team’s project manager and one of four paddlers of Cal Poly’s canoe, Oceana.
The team secured the overall title by finishing in the top two in each of the 100-point competition’s four sections: oral presentation (30 points); technical proposal (25 points); final product prototype (25 points); and racing (20 points).
Cal Poly concrete canoes are known for their aesthetic design while being surprisingly light (175 pounds) and strong. Oceana is 18 feet and 8 inches long, with a quarter-inch, carbon fiber and fiberglass reinforced hull.