Monday, April 28, 2025
MANHATTAN – On Tuesday, Feb. 25, 11 students from BJSHS attended the KidWind Regional Competition in Manhattan, Kansas and represented Beloit well.
The junior high team of Oakleigh Adams, Charlotte Norton, Emmery Manning, Alison Goddard, and Mady Stillwell came home with 1st place in the 6th through 8th grade division.
The team of Brecken Lesage Avery Loomis, Aaliyah Dunigan, and Whitley Gronewoller did very well but did not make top two teams to qualify.
The team of Rilee Lundine, Tripp Stillwell, Colby Albert, and Brylee LePon brought home 1st place in the 9th-12th grade division. This qualified both teams for the State Kidwind Challenge in April in Salina where all six Regional winners throughout the state will compete in each age division and the top two teams at State will get to attend the World Kidwind event in Phoenix, AZ.
The KidWind Challenge is a wonderful wind energy learning experience for students. The students explore wind energy through the hands-on approach of designing, building, testing, and re-designing their own wind turbines in a competitive atmosphere. The students were scored on four different categories: wind turbine performance measuring how many Joules of energy their turbines could produce in 30 seconds, judging interview where they present to a judging panel about their wind turbine and answer questions, a Wind energy quiz to test their knowledge on Wind energy, and an instant challenge where they cannot prepare for the event, but have to think on the spot to come up with a solution to a problem in a timed atmosphere. The students really enjoyed the fun, competitive atmosphere of the competition and learned a lot from it.
These students spent countless hours preparing for this competition mostly coming in outside of the school day to work. Their hard work paid off and the teams that are advancing cannot wait to show off their new and improved designs at the State competition in April.
