2007 Miracle Yearbook

e lear skies and steady waters conflicted with rattled emotions and less-than-sturdy canoe designs at this year's cardboard canoe race. Having returned to the standard raceformat after a treacherous new course was attempted last year,several freshman engineers made it safely to the other side ofCedar Lake with little damage to their precious creations. While a number ofcompetitors did an impressivejob of paddling through the turbulent waters,this year's winners held the spectators'attention with a unique design and break-neck time. Freshman Michael Conyers,a member ofthe winning team,described the special design oftheir canoe.As opposed to the typical canoe design,Conyers and his team built a canoe that was 11 feet long and 2feet wide,allowing smooth movementacross the water.However,according to advisor and senior Ryan Prins, having Conyers on the team enabled their victory simply because"he's a stud." Another surprising factor that clenched the prized TI-89'sfor thesefreshman engineers was their passenger,junior Amanda Cole. According to teammate Nathan Ciolek,"She was yelling whatto do to our guys while riding across the lake. Ifshe wasn't allowed to help paddle in any way,at least she could keep the engineers in line." Engineering students weren'tthe only victors on canoe race day,however. In the departmental races,the Centennial Library staff's canoe barely snatched the coveted trophyfrom the Student Campus Activities Board in the last seconds ofthe race.Junior paddler Linnea Norris explained the most difficult part ofthe race was "jumping out ofthe canoe atthe end into squishy lake muck that encapsulated my legs!' n Trey Johnston and Kyle Spivey(back)celebrate their demolition derby win.According to Spivey,"after the first[brace] broke..I thought we were dead,but in the end The Gremlin prevailed."