It’s a good week to make some history.
Just seven days before the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary, the Western Kentucky University concrete canoe wrote a new chapter in its own history book, winning the school’s first Society-wide concrete canoe championship this weekend at the ASCE Civil Engineering Student Championships at Fairmont State University in West Virginia.
Their winning canoe?
It was named “USS Alliance,” honoring the legendary frigate, thought to be America’s first great warship, that played a critical role in the American Revolution. Did we mention that America 250 is happening this week? The timing really couldn’t be more perfect.
“We have quite a few family members within our team that have served our country, fought for the freedom that we have today,” said Western Kentucky concrete canoe co-captain Luke Evans. “We wanted to honor that; we wanted to honor all the men and women that have served in our military. So that's another reason that our team fully bought in this year. We knew that if we were going do a theme like this, it's not something that you can do halfway.”
The ASCE Civil Engineering Student Championships brings together student teams from around the world who have qualified for the Society-wide finals in one of three ASCE student competitions: concrete canoe, surveying, and sustainable solutions.
The history theme was prevalent across the competitions. Penn State University won the school’s first overall surveying championship. And Johns Hopkins University claimed the Sustainable Solutions title, making it a clean sweep of first-time winners.
The Western win was perhaps particularly sweet as it marked a true breakthrough for the Hilltoppers canoe team after nearly a decade of “almosts” and “close-but-not-quites.”
Consider that roughly 200 schools around the world compete in concrete canoe each year; and that only approximately 25 of those teams earn trips to the championships. Western Kentucky has finished in the top 5 of the entire pool eight times before this year – including six out of the last nine times the finals have been in person.
Always impressively near the top of the hill; but never quite at the very top.
Until now.
“We've never finished second either. Last year, we came in third place,” Evans said. “So we knew that we had never scratched the surface of first place, so that was always our goal all along: shoot for the stars.”
Fellow co-captain Sophia Adams credited a strategic design change for getting the team to the hilltop.
“Going into this year, we wanted to create a new hull design to help us move through the water faster during races, because we always thought that's what our problem was with not being able to get higher than third place in nationals,” Adams said. “So, going in, we said, 'The hull design is what we need to focus on.' And sure enough, it really was.”
The proof could be seen in Western finishing top 5 in each of the canoe races this year. The ‘Tops also earned Best Technical Presentation and Best Final Product en route to victory. Missouri University of Science and Technology finished second overall in the concrete canoe standings. New York University Tandon finished third; Ecole de technologie superieure finished fourth; and Virginia Polytechnic and State University finished fifth.
San Diego State University won the Spirit of the Competition Award, with special mention for the Miller School of Albemarle, a high school from Virginia that participated as an exhibition team.
The celebration in the Western Kentucky engineering department, meanwhile, might last all summer.
“I immediately just started crying,” Adams said of hearing her school name announced as the overall winner during the awards banquet. “I just was just tears, and then we all hugged, and as we were walking up to the stage, I was like, ‘Wow, we actually did it. Our year of work, actually, fully paid off. It fully happened.’”
Added Evans: “I thought about all the hard work that our team has put in, all the dedication, late nights. There were some all-nighters at school working on our technical execution package or staining. Just all the hard work coming to fruition.”
“A year of memories just flooded the brain,” Adams said.
More on the winning surveying and sustainable solutions teams in Civil Engineering Source this week.
Learn more about the ASCE Civil Engineering Student Championships, including the complete 2026 standings.
