Elsinore High School Rounds Out Weekend's Solar Cup

It was a good showing, but Elsinore High School students had to tip their hats to Canyon High School in Orange County and South El Monte High in Los Angeles County this weekend.

The two So Cal high schools were the big winners in Sunday's Metropolitan Water District of Southern California's weekend-long Solar Cup Competition at Lake Skinner, involving 700 students from 39 regional high schools.

Canyon High, in Anaheim, was the overall winning team in the "veteran" division, while South El Monte took top honors in the "newcomer" division.

The competition that began Friday with trial runs concluded Sunday with a series of 200-meter sprint races, with the boaters relying on batteries charged by absorbed sunlight to power their rigs and make it through a course going about 17 mph, according to the MWD.

Teams from Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Diego counties were entered into this year's contest, crewing 16-foot skiffs for low-speed heats around the lake. Elsinore High School was the only Lake Elsinore Unified School District entrant.

Winning entries from Riverside County included Jurupa Valley High, which was first in the Inland Region in the 200-meter sprint; a team from San Jacinto High and San Jacinto Valley Academy, runner-up in the Inland Region 200-meter sprint; and Nuview Bridge Early College High School in Nuevo, which won in the Solar Endurance category.

"The conditions were perfect today," Solar Cup coordinator Julie Miller said Sunday. "It was a very efficient, very well-run event."

Other Riverside County schools entered in the competition were:

-- Centennial High School, Corona;

-- Riverside County High School, Jurupa Valley;

-- Paloma Valley High School, Menifee;

-- Temecula Valley High School, Temecula; and

-- Elsinore High School, Wildomar.

Students spent the past seven months readying their hand-built boats, composing technical reports and putting together a water-conservation presentation -- all of which were judged and awarded points in the event.

"What makes this competition so unique compared to other science-based events is that it's inter-disciplinary," Miller said. "It not only fits science, technology, engineering and math core curriculum guidelines, but it also integrates the environmental sciences, along with visual and language arts, into the program's learning objectives."

On Saturday, the single-person boats were launched for a 1-mile endurance race, deploying solar-collection panels to power their engines and onboard electronics.

Since 2002, roughly 8,000 students have taken part in the solar boat races, according to the MWD.

Last year's Solar Cup champion was Savanna High School of Anaheim. The school did not enter this year's competition.