Felida/Salmon Creek — The Knights STEM Association, a group of youth from four different schools, has qualified to compete for the Team America Rocketry Challenge final fly-off May 14 at Great Meadow in The Plains, Va., just outside Washington, D.C. The club is the only team from Vancouver that qualified. It placed among the top 100 of 789 teams in the U.S. and will face top rocketry teams from across the country for the national championship.
Members of the team are Rohan Au, 13, an eighth-grader at Jason Lee Elementary; Hayden Heitz, 15, a ninth-grader at Skyview High School; Jacob Nieuwstraten, 14, home schooled; Kristian Pedersen, 14, a ninth-grader at Skyview High School, and Luke Ohama, 14, a ninth-grader at Columbia River High School. They have been together for six years, competing in tabletop robot competitions through First Lego League, and have placed in the top 1.7 percent of nearly 500 teams in Southwest Washington and Oregon.
The Team America Rocketry Challenge is the aerospace and defense industry’s flagship program designed to encourage students to pursue study careers in science, technology, engineering and math.
The competition challenges middle and high school students to design, build and fly a rocket that meets specific altitude and flight duration parameters. This year’s rules require a rocket carrying two raw eggs to reach 850 feet before returning the eggs to Earth, uncracked, within 44 to 46 seconds.
The Knights STEM Association hope to win more than $100,000 in prizes and scholarships and an opportunity to further represent the U.S. in Great Britain in July at the International Rocketry Challenge.
