North Carolina Students Win National Team America Rocketry Challenge (TARC)
Team Will Compete in UK this Summer
May 17, 2008; The Plains, Va. - A team from Enloe High School in Raleigh, North Carolina, won the national Sixth Annual Team America Rocketry Challenge Saturday, beating out 99 rivals for the title.
The 10-member team rose to the top of squads of middle and high school-aged students facing off in the final round of the world's largest rocket competition held today outside of Washington, D.C.
"We saw it go up and it looked perfect and it was ideal," Enloe team Captain Levon Keusseyan said.
The team logged a score of 23.94 to take the title. Each point represents a deviation from altitude and time aloft targets, so the lower the score, the better. The team's second flight improved over their first round score. Mulberry Grove (Illinois) High School took second place with a score of 29.88, while Kickapoo High School from Springfield, Missouri, placed third with a score of 30.54.
The next stop for the winning team is a trip to the Farnborough International Airshow and a fly-off against the winners of the UK Aerospace Youth Rocketry Challenge from Horsforth Secondary School in Yorkshire. Raytheon Company, a major supporter of the competition, is sponsoring the team's trip as part of the TARC winners 1st prize package for the third year.
In addition to a trip to London, the winners share a prize pool of more than $60,000 with other top finishers. Lockheed Martin Corporation will provide $5,000 scholarships to each of the top three teams, and the teams also will receive an invitation from NASA to participate in its Student Launch Initiative, an advanced rocketry program.
Members of the Enloe High School team are: Levon Keusseyan, Alexander Viten, Julianne Schmitz, Zachariah Smith, Timothy Kijewski, Christopher Cox, A.J. Grant, James Cuffney, Francisco Cobo and Justin Bost. Their teacher/advisor is Bradley Bowen.
Complete competition results and TARC photos are available at http://www.rocketcontest.org.