The team members threw their hands into a circle, and Tyler Mokris yelled, “Gators on three!”
The UF Concrete Canoe team cheered at the American Society of Civil Engineers’ southeastern conference then raced their 22-foot-long canoe through the water.
The team placed first at the southeast regional competition this weekend, which qualified them to compete at the national level for the 11th time. The national competition will be at Clemson University on June 20 through June 22.
“We’re excited to represent the school this summer,” said Danielle Kennedy, the team’s head captain.
The team is judged on how they design and build their canoe, with equal weight on a design paper, oral presentation, the canoe’s craftsmanship and how quickly they complete endurance competitions.
“I think the canoe competition is more time-intensive than class,” said Mokris, the team’s construction and paddling captain and a UF civil engineering senior.
Kennedy, 22, said the team has been preparing for the competition since September 2014.
In December, they built a practice canoe to test out their design and let it harden for four weeks. Then, they sanded and painted it, she said. The team repeated the process in January for their competition canoe and decorated it to look like the Everglades.
Kennedy, a UF civil engineering senior, said the canoes are able to float despite being made of concrete. Whereas traditional concrete is mixed with sand and gravel, the club’s canoes are made from concrete and minuscule pieces of recycled glass, similar to what’s used in barges.
The UF team reinforces the canoes’ three layers of concrete with a mesh-like fabric, but Kennedy said they are fragile enough to break.
“It gets a little too intense, and you take a piece out,” she said.
Although Kennedy and Mokris won’t be making concrete canoes after they graduate, they said the competition has taught them how to execute a project from start to finish.
“You get to actually use the stuff you learn in a practical situation,” Mokris, 23, said.
Kennedy said she likes getting to know her teammates, who double as her classmates.
“You just spend a lot of time together,” she said, “so you have to be friends.”
[A version of this story ran on page 8 on 3/27/2015 under the headline “UF engineering team’s concrete canoe wins regional competition”]
The UF Concrete Canoe team poses with the Bull Gator outside Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.
