Winning form

The University of Maine’s recent national championship didn’t fill Alfond Arena with howling fans. And no one is going to join next year’s team members at midnight when they open the practice sessions to defend their title. But then paper kayaks aren’t really that popular anywhere.

That’s a shame, because it turns out that engineering students at UMaine are exceedingly gifted at designing and building them. So good, in fact, that they finished first recently in a national paper kayak competition called Energy Challenge ’99, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Institute for Paper Science and Technology. Last year the UMaine team was second to the University of Colorado.

The contest is this: Student teams are required to design, build and race a one-person kayak made from paper products, which can include wood pulp, linerboard or corrugated board, and commonly used paper chemicals. The kayaks can be no more than 9 feet long, 2.5 feet wide and can weigh no more than 35 pounds. UMaine not only received top marks for its design, but Black Bear Jaime Morin impressed judges at the contest outside of Atlanta by racing over the 300-yard course in a trice above 3 minutes.

Even with that kind of performance, it is unlikely that paper kayaks will be a hot seller at sporting goods stores in the near future. They will, however, remain an excellent way for students to learn about engineering concepts and the properties of paper and wood fiber, particularly useful areas of study in this state. They are also one way of showing how the home team stacks up against national competition.

Maine’s champions included Chad Allen, Michael Davis, Ms. Morin, Peter Paine, Benjamin Roeder, Christopher Roeder and Przymek Jamroz. The winning coach was John Hwalek, an associate professor of chemical engineering. A group that also deserves credit for fostering the level of excellence displayed by the university’s ace paper kayak team is the Pulp and Paper Foundation, which supports research and student achievement at UMaine.

All that remains now is for these engineering students to get together with some of their marketing-major classmates to persuade the public that a paper kayak is exactly what’s missing in their lives.