Teamwork made all the difference for Eli Urda, Julian Holdredge, Thomas Hong, and Anthony Cannistra who won first place at BOCES Engineering Day Wednesday.
The 8th graders took the top prize one year after finishing 16th in the same competition. The difference?
“This year we worked very well together and listened to each other’s ideas,” said Holdredge.
“We did badly last year. We didn’t work as a team,” said Urda.
The team built a Rube Goldberg machine that had to waste as much time as possible before setting off a party popper within two minutes.
“The more time it took, the more points you got. At the top of our project, we had ball going down a number of ramps back and forth as a time waster so we could get more points,” said Holdredge.
“Coming up with the ideas and building it was a lot of fun,” said Cannistra.
It might have been fun, but it wasn’t easy.
“With the party pooper, we couldn’t figure out how to pop it so we duct taped the party popper to a table, duct taped the string to a roll of duct tape, and threw the roll of duct tape off the table,” said Hong.
The team members did some quick math at the end of the competition and assumed they at least finished in the top three. They ended up finishing in first place by 30 points.
“It felt great. Based on our performance last year, it felt incredible,” said Holdredge.
This is the second straight year a Windsor Central Middle School team took first place at this event.