Last month, Kendall high school, Terra Environmental Research Institute (Terra), sent two radio controlled or RC car racing teams to compete in the National STEM League (NSL) Finals competition at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Nearly 400 middle and high school students from across the nation and China participated in the event. South Florida was well represented with six teams: two from Terra, two from Coral Park, and one each from Varela and The Benjamin School.
The competition is sponsored by Ten80 Education, a national STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, art, and Mathematics) support organization that sponsors high school engineering programs including the Student Racing Challenge.
Terra, as a leading South Florida STEAM high school, has a robust and popular RC club as part of its engineering program, led by one of its engineering teachers, Mr. Hector Escobero.
Unfortunately, the cost to start a new team and become the driver is costly, so most schools are only able to fund one car and driver. This motivated freshmen member, Ethan Matzner, to try something new: fundraising online. To start a team, Ethan, had to pay a $600 entrance fee and raise an additional $400 to buy all of the parts necessary to build a race-worthy car. To raise the money, he opened a GoFundMe campaign that was successful in raising the total of $1,000 dollars that was needed and would allow him to be a freshmen driver in what became the Terra 2 Car. Terra 1 Car was driven by senior Pedro Blandon. Hunter Reker, Andre van Grieken, and Ariel Otero served as pit crew to assist the drivers.
The club president, Sebastian Martinez, a junior, helped organize the local competitions ensuring that the team’s final goal of competing at nationals, would become a reality. National competition rules require all participants to win first place overall at one local race. Once Matzner and the team finished building the Terra 2 Car, he competed in his first race at the Miami-Dade County Fair Competition. Ethan did well, but fell short of the requirements, however the Terra 1 Car, driven by Blandon won. The teams next race was at The Benjamin School in Palm Beach County. At that race, Ethan’s team won first place overall and qualified for the Nationals.
Students had the opportunity to win several awards, including small awards for individual competitions and three larger awards for overall winners, which had the highest total score across all categories. The first place team was awarded $1000, second place $500, and third place $100. The awards were made of spark plugs from an actual scrapped professional drag racing car, which made the awards even more enticing to car enthusiasts.
All the teams attending nationals had to pay their own way to attend. The Terra team did some fundraising and even received $250 from Applebee’s in Kendall. .
The Terra teams were surprised to find how friendly and supportive other teams were at the competition. The Terra team looks forward to competing in the finals next year!
