3, 2 ,1, blast off! – Teams with LWSD students qualify for American Rocketry Challenge

Students from Lake Washington School District have secured a spot at the national level of the 2024 American Rocketry Challenge. Timberline Middle School (TMS) and Eastlake High School (EHS) are represented in the teams competing this year. TMS has two students who will be at the national event on May 18 in Washington D.C. They are on Team SmilingTree. A team made up of 10 students from EHS, named Team PoweringSTEM, qualified as the seventh alternate for the competition.

There were a record 922 teams who competed for just 100 spots nationwide this year for the national event. Teams from 28 states will be represented on May 18, all vying for $100,000 in cash and prizes and to earn an all-expenses-paid trip to the International Rocketry Challenge in July.

According to its website, the American Rocketry Challenge is the world’s largest rocket contest with nearly 5,000 students nationwide competing each year. The contest gives middle and high school students the opportunity to design, build, and launch model rockets and hands-on experience solving engineering problems. Teams qualify by submitting a flight form that shows the result of test flights in front of an approved senior National Association of Rocketry member.

Below is a list of the students competing in the rocket challenge:

SmilingTree – Timberline Middle School

• Vaibhav Narayanan, Eighth Grade
• Shreyas Krishna, Seventh Grade

PoweringSTEM – Eastlake High School

• Nidhi Dodiya, Freshman
• Eshaan Verma, Sophomore
• Abhinav Varanasi, Sophomore
• Siddharth Yenamandra, Sophomore
• Aarav Srivastava, Sophomore
• Amogh Khanzode, Sophomore
• Lan Nhi Nguyen, Sophomore
• Rain Jia, Sophomore
• Angela Dong, Junior
• Anusha Begur, Junior