Cal Poly’s Concrete Canoe Team took second place at the recent national concrete canoe competition.
Cal Poly was the reigning champion the past two years.
This year, they took first in the final product category while winning four of the five races at the event in Melbourne, Florida.
The competition features teams of students from the United States and beyond that have created canoes made of concrete. Organizers say Cal Poly advanced to the nationals after winning the Pacific Southwest regionals on its home turf and at Lake Nacimiento in April.
The canoe Cal Poly competed with is called Yggdrasil, named after a mythical tree in Norse cosmology. The boat weighed 183 pounds and measured 19.3 feet.
Cal Poly took home the championship in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2017 and 2018. The winner this year was The University of Florida.
“I am so proud of the team and everything that we accomplished this year,” said Mason Breipohl, Cal Poly’s project manager, a civil engineering senior from Elk Grove, California. “We had a smaller team this year, so every team member played a huge role in the project. The team worked countless hours and embraced challenges along the way to continue the Cal Poly Concrete Canoe Team legacy. This project was a truly rewarding experience, and we will forever cherish the growth, achievements, and friendships.”
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. The men’s race team finished in second in the sprint category just .38 of a second behind Canada’s Université Laval.
