Hopkins JETS Team First in the Nation

Last month, Hopkins sent four student teams to participate in The Junior Engineering Technical Society (JETS) competition. JETS is “a national non-profit educational organization dedicated to promoting engineering and technology careers to our nation's young people.” Their TEAMS event is an academic competition that challenges students with real-life engineering problems. (www.jets.org)

All four Hopkins JETS teams experienced great success. Out of 1180 teams, the Varsity teams were 1st and 2nd in the state, and 1st and 7th in the nation; the JV teams were 2nd and 3rd in the state, and 6th in the nation. See more detailed scores and statistics on the JETS website: http://www.jets.org/teams/archives/natlRankings08.cfm

JETS adviser and science teacher Peter Swan explained the competition in greater detail, “The competition was held the day before March break at the University of New Haven, hosted by UNH professor Carl Barratt. I assembled four teams based on areas of expertise – physics, chemistry, math – and various other criteria. Some of this team-creation was a bit arbitrary – there were any number of substitutions from one team to another that, I feel, would not have diminished either squad.  I ended up using one team as a farm club, from which I had to call up a replacement on the day of the competition when a varsity starter went on the DL. That team ended up with only five members for competition, rather than the recommended eight.” 

“I was most interested in everyone having a positive experience,” he continued, “but nonetheless, part of that turned out to be all four teams placing in their respective divisions in the state.  As I mentioned, one team was state champion, one placed 3^rd in Junior Varsity and one 2^nd, and one team placed 2^nd in the state varsity. 

Our state champion team’s victory was based on the first half of the JETS test – a set of 100 multiple choice questions based on eight different scenarios derived from the common theme of Olympic-scale sporting events. The second half of the competition involved open-ended follow-up questions to those scenarios.  The entire test is intended to challenge applications of science in a manner similar to that encountered in the engineering profession, and students had to respond through essay, sketches, and calculations.  That is the part of the test assessed at the national level.”

Hopkins JETS Team Results:

Delta Force (Hopkins Varsity A team)

* Placed 1st in CT division 4 (selective schools of all sizes)

* 1st in the nation division 2 (selective schools of <150 enrollment per class)

Team members:

Will Bray ’08 (captain)

Cory Levinson ’08

Adam Arthurs ’08

Genevieve Brett ’08

Jon Evensen ’08

Ben Weitzman ’09

Sarah Scolnic ’09

Alan Thorne ’09

Killer Bees: [Hopkins Varsity B team]

* Placed 2nd in CT division 4

* Placed 7th in the nation division 2

Team members:

Topher Pagliarella ’08 (captain)

Kyle Alpern ’08

Peter Fedak ’09

Pablo Cuevas ’09

David Fantarella ’09

Luke Lamar ’09

Salil Kumar ’08

Elizabeth Mastroianni ’08

JVA

* Placed 2nd in CT division JV1 (all schools, no seniors on team)

* Placed 6th in the nation division 2 JV (selective schools, no seniors)

Nabil Mehta ’09 (captain)

James Wooten ’09

Chris Bell ’09

Kavan Reddy ’09

Ariel Hyre ’09

Drew Gleeman ’09

Conor Duffy ’09

Ches Koblents-Mishke ’09

JVB

* Placed 3rd in CT division JV1 (all schools, no seniors on team)

Nathaniel Zelinsky ’09 (captain)

Allison Lyons ’09

Stephen Wooten ’09

Rebecca Schutzengel ’09

Rajeev Mehrotra ’09

Mr. Swan added, “When I sent out the list of team members to excuse them from classes for the day, I received a note back from Head of School Barbara Riley wondering if this isn’t a larger group than we’ve taken in the past.  I replied that it is, but we had a lot of interest this year.”

Looks like this increased interest and extra hard work paid off. Congratulations to all our Hopkins JETS team members on their great success!