Delran Middle School team wins Rowan Blast-Off 2018

The novice all-girls team The Girlz, of Delran Middle School, under the leadership of Jenn Frisella, won first place in the Rowan Blast Off 2018 Rocketry Competition at Rowan’s South Jersey Technology Park on April 28. Eight rocketry teams from schools in New Jersey and Pennsylvania competed in the third-annual event hosted by the Rowan-AIAA  (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics) student club.

Teams comprising more than 40 students from grade schools and high schools were tasked with sending a rocket carrying two raw hen eggs to an altitude of exactly 800 feet, with a flight duration of 41-43 seconds. Any deviation from ideal flight parameters resulted in a penalty: four points for every second and one point for each foot. Additional penalties were assessed for rockets that deviated from design standards (overall weight, length and weight-to-thrust ratio).

In addition to the Blast-Off Rocketry competition, the event also included a fair featuring projects presented by students in the Henry M. Rowan College of Engineering; a Fly What You Got segment, during which teams and volunteers launched smaller rockets for fun; and a session with guest speaker Jessica Snyder on the importance of hard work, persistence and having fun while launching dreams in whatever field participants planned to pursue.

Rowan Blast-Off is an annual event that started in 2016, when then-senior mechanical engineering student Snyder organized the first model rocketry event as a kick-off for the newly established Rowan-AIAA student club. Today, Snyder works at the NASA Langley Research Center on the Flight Simulation Software Engineering team.

This year’s event coordinators were Rowan senior Andrew Mato and sophomore Dan Mato. Other students from Rowan Engineering and the College of Communication & Creative Arts; volunteers from the Bridgeton Area Rocketry Association (BARC #775) and the South Jersey Area Rocketry Society (SoJARS #593), certified by and active in the National Association of Rocketry (NAR); and faculty volunteers Dr. John Schmalzel, Engineering, and Prof. Olga Vilceanu, Public Relations & Advertising, also supported the event.

The second place and trophy went to veteran all-girls team Soaring Pandas, of Nazareth High School Academy, in Northeast Philadelphia, guided by Greg Severino and Gregory Kennedy.

Third place went to another novice team, Apollo 8, from Our Lady of Calvary Catholic School in Northeast Philadelphia, also guided Severino and Kennedy.