MORRISTOWN, Vt. (WCAX) – Female engineering students are bridging the gap, winning an international bridge-building competition in Montreal.
The Troitsky Bridge Building competition is an annual event held at Concordia University, where students design and build a model bridge out of popsicle sticks, toothpicks, white glue, and dental floss.
People’s Academy’s team was the only group of high schoolers in the event for college students and their model was selected as the best in the world.
In a male-dominated field and in a competition of only college students this team of four young women struck gold.
“Learn one-on-one what it’s like to build something from your own hands and all the steps that it takes to really perform well,” said 12th grader Gabby Shaffer. People’s Academy seniors and best friends Gigi Calhoun, Lucy Nigro, Phoenix Masten, and Gabby Shaffer have been working together as a bridge-building team since 6th grade.
“It was the start of a very long and intense journey,” said Calhoun.
“We did that for a while in middle school and we built one bridge but then we couldn’t compete because of COVID. So we competed it in high school and we loved it,” said Nigro.
Earlier this year, teacher Karsten Weiss heard about the Troitsky Bridge Building competition and says he talked the organizers into letting his team of high schoolers into the event. “It’s exceeded all our expectations, which was really cool. We just wanted to not be last in one category. We tried our best,” said Weiss.
The team spent countless hours preparing, and crunching numbers. “I definitely remember when we were first getting into the math Mr. was whipping out his little shop trigonometry book and I’m just looking at like sine and cosine tangent,” said Masten.
And executing this bridge, holding 5,099 pounds. Now they’re touting their first-place overall win, in addition to accolades in structural efficiency, bridge strength, and team presentation.
“Once we got there and we looked at all the other teams, we were like, we might actually have a chance in this. Because we were getting it done and it looked strong,” said Nigro
The students are graduating not only with a trophy, but say they’ve honed skills in time management, drive, and for one a passion for engineering.“It really has helped like, fuel my creativity,” said Nigro.
The team says they noticed they were one all-girl team of few at the competition and say many came up to them and acknowledged how inspiring their feat was.