Amidst the numerous varsity and club sports at N.C. State, there is one team whose existence, not to mention its success, is unknown to many at the University. The concrete canoe team, coming off its first-place finish at its regional competition in Atlanta, looks forward to its national competition in Seattle this summer.
Vince Grainger, a senior in civil engineering and the team captain, said his team has a chance to be competitive at the national level.
“I think we have a top-10 team,” Grainger said. “The highest we’ve ever placed has been eighth, and I think we have a top-10 team this year just because we’ve covered all the details. As long as our boat will hold together, and as long as our paddling team is up to the challenge, we’ll finish in the top 10.”
The concrete canoe team is a part of the student chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Students are charged with the task of molding, casting and racing a canoe made entirely of concrete.
The competition consists of both men’s and women’s sprint and endurance races, including a coed sprint. The teams are allowed two paddlers for the sprints and three paddlers for the endurance races. Grainger said while there is only one day of racing, the team began working on its vessel — “In Sea State” — in September.
“We actually had a hull design before the rules came out,” Grainger said. “We had to tweak it a little bit when they came out because they had a rule change that we were not expecting. We started as soon as possible, and it has been a year-long thing. We spent months and months tweaking our mold. We laid the concrete, and we’ve been sanding and finishing the concrete ever since.”
The team’s first-place finish in Atlanta came against a concrete canoe team that has dominated the competition in recent years, as Clemson came in having won the past 14 regional championships. In addition, the Tigers have finished in the top five nationally for the past 10 years and have won two national championships.
Brad Little, a junior in civil engineering who has been on the team for two years, said beating Clemson was one of the biggest goals for the Atlanta competition.
“They have the longest winning streak in concrete canoe history,” Little said. “That’s over the entire nation; that’s not just in our conference. So they’ve pretty much run stuff for the last 14 years, and nobody’s really even come close to them. This year we set that as one of our main goals: to just give them a run for their money. They had some troubles, and we picked them off.”
At the national competition, the Pack will have to take on the other perennial powerhouses of California-Berkeley, Wisconsin-Madison and Michigan Tech. It will also have to face rival Clemson again because the Tigers advanced as the second team from the region. Little said State will be ready.
“We’re going to practice a lot more between now and then and see the best combinations of people to be in what races,” Little said. “We’re looking forward to taking them on.”
