Competing against 31 middle school and high school teams from Wisconsin, Illinois and Ohio in the Rockets for Schools program May 11-12, Trinity Lutheran School’s students earned the first and second place awards for rocket construction.
The Rockets for Schools competition is a two-day event held annually in Sheboygan in which students construct either Class 1 (6’) or Class 2 (8’) rockets, design an experimental payload, and launch the rockets over Lake Michigan.
“This is the third year our students have participated in Rockets for Schools,” said teacher Jeff Holt. “It is amazing to see the progress our program has made enabling our sixth, seventh, and eighth graders to not only compete with, but to beat high school juniors and seniors.”
“I like seeing how the rocket comes together,” said seventh grader Croix Woller.
His teammate, Johnny Handlin added, “I even like all of the sanding we had to do to make the rocket so smooth. It makes it look awesome when it’s painted.”
“The attention to detail our students demonstrated as they did things like construct an engine mount or epoxy fins into place and creating perfect fillets in the joints was evident,” Holt said.
Trevor Dzwonkowski, a parent of one of Trinity’s rocket students, assisted the students with the painting of the rockets which drew high praise from the judging committee.
Rocketry is one of the STEM-related elective classes taught in the middle school grades at Trinity.
“Our students get to choose between electives that focus on STEM, foreign languages, art, drama, music, fitness, social studies, life skills and service opportunities,” said Holt.
