Schools
Registration, Mechanical Problems Dampen High School Hovercraft Competition
A regional hovercraft race at Riverside Park in Hartford ended up as a one-sided competition after registration and engine problems plagued two of the high school teams.
Although three area high schools were slated to hit the water and race with their handmade hovercrafts at Riverside Park in Hartford on Saturday, it was only Tolland High School who was able to compete...against themselves.
After getting their hovercraft craft out into the water, the Manchester High School Hover Team eventually had to withdraw from the race because of issues with one of their vessels. The other craft the Manchester team transported to the park wasn’t complete, and therefore not suitable to race.
According to Beth Penney, who teaches Principles of Technology at Manchester High School, the engine of the craft kept cutting out and the team couldn’t keep the engine lift up.
Find out what's happening in Tollandwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Despite the disappointment, the Tolland team, headed by power technology teacher Jim Benini, let the Manchester students who didn’t have a chance to go out on the water take a stab at it with the Tolland craft.
“My guys got to drive - that’s kind of the cool part,” Penney said. “[Benini] let my drivers fly so at least they could get out there.”
Find out what's happening in Tollandwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
All of the students who planned to drive the hovercrafts were required to obtain their boaters' licenses in order to compete, and all the high schools involved teamed together for the class.
Rockville High School, the third team scheduled to compete against Manchester and Tolland, did not have the proper registration to take part. The Rockville vessel had to be used in a government function in order to be driven.
Ray Frost, a Rockville High School mechanical engineering teacher who headed the Racing Rams team, said the roughly 12 students had been working on the hovercraft for several hours a day the past three weeks. This marks the first year Rockville signed up for the friendly competition.
“The kids worked pretty hard on it,” Frost said of the craft, which is owned by the school. “We just rolled it out of the garage this afternoon.”
Kevin Cusson, a senior at Rockville High, said, “We’ve been working since 8 a.m. to get it going.”
Like Rockville, this is the first year that the Tolland Hover Team signed up to take part in the competition. There were roughly 30 students in Benini’s class that built two different hovercrafts, one during the fall semester and the second this past spring semester.
Tolland senior Lauren McNevins, 17, said she took the class due to an interest in the field, particularly flying.
“I want to be a pilot one day,” she said. “I can use this experience for the logistics of flying.”
Roughly 9 years ago, Benini started building the crafts at Parish Hill High School in Chaplin and brought it to the Tolland school district this year. In Rockville, the craft is built through the mechanical engineering class. And, in Manchester, it is part of the Principals of Technology class.
Despite not being able to officially race on Saturday, the Manchester and Rockville teams hope to take the crafts back to the high school fields for another run before the school year ends.
