New HVA AeroHAWKS team national champs
After winning first place in the American Rocketry Challenge among roughly 800 competitors coast-to-coast, Hardin Valley Academy AeroHAWKS Aeronautics Team 1 is flying high as it prepares to represent the United States as Team USA in the world’s largest rocketry contest, International Rocketry Challenge, in Paris.
“I’m ecstatic about it,” Team 1 captain Zaen Grissino-Mayer, a sophomore during the 2022-23 school year who is now a rising junior, said about the Challenge Saturday, May 20, in Great Meadow Events Center in The Plains, Virginia. “I think it means the school needs to value STEM more and the scientific clubs.
“I’m super-excited (to travel to Paris),” said Grissino-Mayer, a team member who is in the engineering pathway in the STEM Academy at HVA. “I took French for two years now — three classes of it. I can’t wait to see it. I never left the country before so this will be a first.”
“It was amazing,” said Tim Smyrl, teams’ faculty sponsor/mentor who teaches engineering at HVA. “For a first-year team, you don’t expect to win the whole thing coming right out; but based in their early success, I thought they’d be competitive.
“Our goal was really to finish in the top 25 ...,” he added.
With 11 students in the rocketry program, other Team 1 members are Bailey Mounts, “Mickey” Dandena, Khalil Ortiz, Caleb Mulder, Trey Harvey and Otilia Colnic.
Meanwhile, HVA Team 2, which included captain Aidan Finney, Branton Bruner and Adrian Alemar, placed 10th.
About the challenge, “the kids have to design, build and fly a rocket that’s capable of carrying an egg as close to possible to a target altitude during a target time duration,” Smyrl said. “To qualify for the nationals, they had three chances to get as close as possible to 850 feet in a total flight time of 42 to 45 seconds.”
Team 1 is getting ready for its trip to the Paris Air Show next to Le Bourget Airport, where they will compete against three top teams in the world from Japan, England and France.
“We leave for that Tuesday, June 20,” said Smyrl, who just formed the program after joining the HVA faculty this year.
“I’m brand new here,” he added. “I did basically the exact same program (at Creekview High School in Canton,) Georgia, for the last 17 years.”
Smyrl recreated it at HVA.
“We compete in several little competitions, all aerospace engineering related, the biggest of which is the American Rocketry Challenge,” Smyrl said.
