LHS engineering and architectural design students competed at the district level in Waco and then later advanced to the state level in Corpus Christi. Their competition included entering several individual and group projects as well as taking a written exam.

“It was awesome to have so many students qualify for state,” engineering teacher Tanya Wheat said. “All of them did extremely well, and we even had one group project that got Best in Show. Every group at the state level also received superior ratings.”

Among those competing in Architectural Design, Hunter Haxton, Trevor James and Taylor Farnham qualified for state with their log home model group project, which also won Best in Show. Nelson Bond and Sahil Patel each qualified for state with their individual floor plan projects, and Jared Gibbs also qualified with his commercial space project.

“I’m really proud of everyone that went because all of our projects are things that we worked on here and sent there,” junior Nelson Bond said. “My project was just a basic ranch-style home, and I think my favorite part of the process was seeing the finished project and finally printing it out because it was a solid two month’s worth of work that was finally done.”

Tanner Cramer, Philip Wagoner and Ben McFadden were also state qualifiers for their group project that involved designing a chess set on Autocad software and printing it out on a 3-D printer. Ryan Doyle qualified for state with his individual project that included designing and building a skateboard and press on Autocad.

“It felt pretty good to qualify for state because this is the first year Lindale has competed in engineering,” junior Philip Wagoner said. “It’s a very fun event, and no one else [in Lindale] has really done it before.”

All student also took a four hour drawing test in their field in addition to their previous project entries. Philip Wagoner took 1st place in engineering, Tanner Cramer came in 2nd place in engineering and Ryan Doyle placed 3rd in engineering. Nelson Bond received 1st place in Architecture.

“There are a lot of challenges that went along being in this competition,” Wheat said. “But they actually do very well under pressure. They may act frustrated at first, but it’s almost like they would rather have those challenges that have it come easy to them.”