CRAWFORDVILLE, Indiana USA — A Crawfordsville girl is one of four students from Covenant Christian High School in Indianapolis to qualify for the finals of the prestigious Team America Rocketry Challenge, the world's largest model rocket contest.

Sarah Kleine, a senior, is a returning member of the team and project manager.

The all-senior team also includes Emily Hudspeth, Katherine Wilcox, and David Becerra.

"The most difficult problem to overcome, along with receiving rocket parts in a timely manner, was finding times in the team members' schedules to work together on the project," Kleine said.

After coming in 4th place last year, Covenant split up their experienced members to have three teams this year. The Red, White, and Blue teams launched their rockets over 25 times. Each submitted qualification scores, but only the Red Team, appropriately named "Equipo Rojo", is in the top 100 finalists.

"The best part about this contest experience was getting the notice that Equipo Rojo had qualified to go to the national competition," Kleine said.

Kleine added she was looking forward to the team's trip to Great Meadow, in The Plains, Virginia, for the May 19 national fly-off and hopes to add to her $750 savings bonds winning from last year by placing among the top ten teams again.

Team supervisor Sean Bird, a Covenant Christian calculus and physics teacher, said the contest is an excellent opportunity for students to learn hands-on lessons in position, velocity, acceleration, force and momentum in a nonclassroom setting. Participants apply concepts of physics like Newton's second law of motion to their models and see the results immediately.

"There's a deep satisfaction in knowing things you have learned are helping launch something into the sky," Bird said. "This brings these concepts home to the real world for the students."

Nearly 7,000 students in 690 teams attempted to meet the contest's rigorous requirements of the contest, but only the top scoring 100 high school teams qualified to compete in the national contest.

The contest requires that students design, build and test a model rocket that can fly for as close to 45 seconds total flight duration and 850 feet maximum flight altitude as possible with a payload of one raw egg, and successfully parachute the eggs back to the ground unbroken. The top ten teams will share a prize pool of $60,000 in savings bonds and cash.

The ambitious undertaking has costs, and the team is looking for sponsors to help defray the travel expenses to the Washington, D.C. area and to purchase more rocket engines.

For more information how to help Kleine and her teammates, call the school at 317-390-0202.

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