ROCKFORD, Illinois USA — A team of nine students from Auburn and Jefferson high schools have qualified for the finals of the Team America Rocketry Challenge, the world’s largest model-rocket contest.

The students, competing on two teams called the RockTown Rockets, qualified by placing in the top 100 scoring teams in preliminary competition. Finals are scheduled May 17 in The Plaines, Va. More than 6,000 students on 643 teams entered the challenge.

Students compete for a top-10 split of $60,000 and a first-place trip to the Farnborough Air Show near London in July. Auburn students are seniors Robert Kaufman and Andrew Sundeen, junior Ian Douglass and sophomore Connor Gorman. Jefferson students are seniors Ryan Morand, Sam Villarreal and Michaela Frossard, sophomore Jon Dunaway and freshman Zach Popp.

“The rockets the students build are very complex,” said Auburn physics teacher Dallas Turner, the coach for both teams. “These are not your everyday kits that kids put together as a hobby.”

Contest rules call for students to design and build a model rocket that can fly as close as possible to 45 seconds in duration and 750 feet in altitude with a payload of two raw eggs that must parachute back to the ground unbroken.

Turner has guided Jefferson students to the national finals three times previously. This is the first trip for Auburn. The teams are sponsored by Woodward Governor Co.

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