Tharptown E1716218987936 — Students pose with their rocket during the national competition in Virginia. (Tharptown High School)

Tharptown High School had several students travel to Virginia over the weekend for what became Alabama’s version of October Sky.

The team traveled to Great Meadow in The Plans, Virginia for the American Rocketry Challenge and came away with the title of National Champion. The competition included 922 teams from across the country before a champion was crowned Sunday afternoon.

Keep reading to find out more about the competition + what comes next for the Tharptown team.

American Rocketry Challenge

Tharptown 2 — Tharptown students celebrate after winning the competition. (Tharptown High School)

While the competition started with over 900 teams, there were multiple qualification rounds to whittle down the field to the top 100 for the national finals.

Each team had to submit an application by December 2023. To qualify for nationals, teams had to fly a rocket in front of an observer from the National Association of Rocketry.

The rocket must carry a large hen egg in its flight. Rules included:

Fly at least 820 feet into the air
Stay airborne for 43-46 seconds
Rocket made of two tubes, each at least 150 millimeters long
All parts must return to earth connected together under a parachute
Egg must return to ground unbroken

On Sunday, each finalist launched two flights and Tharptown students had the best run both times. They did enough to edge out Spring Grove Middle School from Pennsylvania.

Tharptown High School Team members included:

Kylee Beard (team captain and motor builder)
Angie Chavez (parachutes)
Shyla Martinez (payload)
Angel Franco (launch setup and retrieval)
Adrionna Ashley (team helper)
Jessie Mitchell (launch setup and retrieval)
Isabella Hall (flight sheets)
Frank Gutierrez (launch setup and retrieval).

Other teams from Alabama + where they finished in the standings included:

Muscle Shoals Team 1 (5th)
St. John Paul II (27th)
Russellville (38th)
Lawrence County 55th)
Muscle Shoals Team 2 (70th)
Thompson (98th)

A rocketry dynasty

Tharptown 3 — Rocketry success is nothing new to the small high school in Franklin County. (Tharptown High School)

Tharptown High School may not be the most well known school in north Alabama. It’s just in Class 2A in athletics. But its rocket program has had plenty of success in its short history.

Tharptown has sent a team to the National Finals six times since the program started in 2018. Tharptown High School has now placed in the top 10 four times, including a second-place finish last year.

With this year’s wins, Tharptown students took home $20,000 and will represent the United States in the International Rocketry Challenge at the Farnborough Air Show, outside London, in July. The school also gets $1,000 for the team’s accomplishments.

“We all work together as a team and come together to give input. We have one senior on our team, one sophomore, and the rest of us are juniors, so we’re looking forward to success in the years ahead. To prepare for the Farnborough Air Show, we plan to launch more during the summer – but we need a lot more supplies! But at the end of the day, it’s going to be YOLO [you only live once], because that’s what we do best.”
~ Kylee Beard, Tharptown High School’s team captain

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