Concrete Canoe Team Wins Sixth National Title
The victory snapped what would have been a four-way tie between UC Berkeley, the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the University of Wisconsin
After a two-year delay due to COVID-19, the Cal Poly concrete canoe team returned to its winning ways at the 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers Concrete Canoe Competition at Louisiana Tech University on June 3-5.
The victory marks Cal Poly’s sixth championship in the 35-year history of the competition. Competing with their space-themed canoe Europa against 19 other universities, eight Cal Poly engineering students not only swept the races but also finished first in the technical presentation and technical proposal categories of the competition and second in the final product prototype.
Cal Poly also received the R. John Craig Memorial Award, which honors the New Jersey Institute of Technology professor who spent several years promoting his grand vision of the National Concrete Canoe Competition to the ASCE but died just months before the first event was held in 1988. In the years since, the competition has become a perennial favorite for tens of thousands of college students in the United States and beyond. ASCE presents the award to the winner of the Coed Sprint Race as a memorial to the teamwork and dedication of Craig.
“It feels amazing,” said civil engineering senior Heather Migdal, construction team lead. “My team and I have sacrificed so much of our time working on the canoe this year, so taking home the national title made it all worth it. It truly became a labor of love.”