Yucaipa, CA—On May 2-4, Yucaipa Regional Park was once again center stage for the SoCal STEAM Challenge, an event involving 12 schools across the Inland Empire competing in a variety of competitions involving the design, operation and performance of a solar-powered boat.
Colton High participated for its third consecutive year, and came in sixth place overall in the competition. For the Yellowjackets STEAM Club, this was a year-long project. Their efforts were awarded as they won Best Workmanship for engineering excellence.
“This means a lot,” said STEAM club president Elizabeth Hernandez. “We put a lot of time into it. With the help of our advisors, we were able to learn a lot of new concepts and make improvements on what we did last year.”
Taking top honors this year overall was Yucaipa High.
Throughout the weekend, teams engage with challenges such as a technical reporting, a technical inspection, a boating speed drag race, a slalom obstacle race, an endurance race, and the presentation of a Public Service Announcement. Due to unforeseen weather on May 4, the Slalom Race was not held this year.
Diana Ruvalcaba Nunez was the boat’s skipper. “It felt really cool,” she said. “I was on this open lake with all eyes on the boat. It felt like some sort of mission—I had a headset on, and it required a lot of adaptability.”
For Colton, there were high expectations for this year, especially after last year’s impressive performance. However, days before the event, there was a major setback.
Incompatible software installations made it impossible to run the engines. This required the team to quickly replace the impacted engines with less powerful ones. This severely capped the boat’s capabilities. It was devastating for the team.
Daniel Hearon, the STEAM Club saw this a learning experience. “It was unfortunate, but the important thing was to make sure the students understand that we don’t give up and that engineering is about finding options and working through difficult problems.”
Despite the setbacks, the Yellowjackets pushed forward and competed.
For the team, the weekend proved to be fun, challenging, and entertaining. While there was a decrease in student participation from 2024, the team still managed to do very well, even with setbacks.
“The students were resilient and had a great attitude,” said Hearon. “I got lots of great comments from the other teams about their upbeat demeanor. We had a good team that made the best out of the situation we were put in.”
Next year, the STEAM Boating team expects to avoid the same setbacks from this year and take home the first place trophy.
“We are a family,” said Hiliana Serrano. “We already spend lots of time together, and that will make for a strong bond next year.”
