Cal Poly’s concrete canoe team won first place in final product while winning four of the five races at the National Concrete Canoe Competition, held over the weekend at the Florida Institute of Technology.
The reigning champions the previous two years, Cal Poly finished second overall, just after the University of Florida. The University of Florida had previously finished in second both in 2017 and 2018, just behind Cal Poly, which has won first place five times since 2010.
The competition, which has been called “The America’s Cup of Civil Engineering,” features teams of students from the United States and beyond that have created canoes made of concrete. Cal Poly advanced to the event, in Melbourne, Florida, after winning the Pacific Southwest regionals on its home turf in April.
In addition to taking top spot in Overall Presentation, Cal Poly won races in both the men’s and women’s slalom competition, the women’s sprint and the co-ed sprint. Cal Poly also finished fourth in Oral Presentation and third in Design Paper. The men’s race team finished in second place in the sprint category.
Cal Poly competed with its canoe, titled Yggdrasil, named after a mythical tree in Norse cosmology, which weighed 183 pounds and measured 19.3 feet.
Cal Poly won the nationals in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2017 and 2018.
This year’s top five were the University of Florida, Cal Poly, Université Laval, Tongji University, and Western Kentucky University.
Here’s a short video of the team during its victory at the regionals, held at Lake Nacimiento in northern San Luis Obispo County.
