Spirits were high as Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School’s rocketry team launched to second place in the American Rocketry Challenge, the world’s largest student rocketry competition.
This win is the first time a team from CESJDS has made the top 100 of the American Rocketry Challenge, earning them a spot in the national finals out of more than 1,000 middle and high school teams across the United States, according to a May 15 post on Facebook.
“We were just sitting in absolute shock,” Jack Spiegel, a member of CESJDS’ rocketry team, said of the May 17 announcement of the results. “We hadn’t expected to get in the top 100, and certainly not the top two.”
In order to qualify for finals, the teams designed, built and launched model rockets that safely carried two raw eggs to an altitude of 790 feet, stayed airborne for between 41 and 44 seconds and returned the rocket safely to the ground, according to the American Rocketry Challenge website. Teams submitted their scores to ARC in April 2024.
The national finals, on May 17 in The Plains, Virginia, introduced a new challenge to the top 100 teams. The top 25 winners, including CESJDS, received an invitation to participate in the “highly selective” NASA Student Launch initiative, according to ARC’s website.
The CESJDS team also took home $15,000 in scholarship funds and another $1,000 for the school, Spiegel’s father said.
Ginger Thornton, the team’s advisor, witnessed the team’s second-place win.
“I was so excited for them,” Thornton said. “I knew how hard they worked to be successful, so that was kind of a moment of elation for me. This particular group of kids has worked together for years on this same project competition.”
Spiegel, an eighth grader at CESJDS who has long been interested in rockets, joined the school’s rocketry club three years ago. There are six students total — four middle school and two high school students — that make up CESJDS’ rocketry team. (Since ARC required at least three students on each competing team, CESJDS divided the six students into two groups of three for the competition.)
Spiegel spent the past academic year designing and building with two other eighth graders at CESJDS: Kyle Berger and Jacob Lavinbuk, who met weekly after school with Thornton and mentor Jonathan Rains.
“Getting [Rains] as our mentor was a gamechanger for us,” Thornton said.
Spiegel attributes the team’s success to its dedication and ingenuity.
“I think it’s been a lot of learning that makes us so good,” he said. “Instead of using pre-bought motors, we built our own.”
Berger said the team began designing their rockets earlier than in previous years, giving them more time to build and refine their creations. The eighth graders also built multiple rockets in case one broke.
“Given that we worked on this rocket almost every week of the school year … it was incredibly exciting and fulfilling to achieve this success,” Lavinbuk wrote in a statement emailed to Washington Jewish Week.
In addition to weekly meetings, Thornton and the team met six to eight Sundays between January and May to test their rockets in Walkersville, Maryland.
“I think the thing that did really well is that they tested their rockets significantly more than we have in the past, and so they were really able to hone in on what would get their rocket to the right altitude and keep it in the air for the right amount of time,” Thornton said. “They looked at the data this year much more successfully than we have in the past.”
Berger agreed that the additional testing helped boost the team to second place in the nation.
“We went to launch a lot more and we got better results with those launches than we did in the past,” he said.
Spiegel navigated challenges — on top of being the sole representative of his three-person team at finals, the competition took place on a Saturday, when CESJDS students are expected to observe Shabbat.
Spiegel’s two designing teammates did not attend the national finals as they were in Atlanta for a week-long field trip through May 18. Spiegel made arrangements to fly home from Atlanta early by himself in order to attend the finals, where he was joined by ninth grader Emmanuel Sarantos, a member of CESJDS’ larger rocketry team, who helped with launch and recovery.
“I’m sad that my other teammates couldn’t come, but it was really cool to be able to represent my school,” Spiegel said.
For CESJDS administrators to approve Spiegel’s attendance at the competition, he had to stay Shomer Shabbos, meaning that he couldn’t write, work or travel during the Sabbath.
Instead of signing the scorecards on May 17, Spiegel signed stickers with his name ahead of time to avoid writing during Shabbat.
“It was a lot of being creative,” Spiegel said. “[Assembling] the rockets the week before, doing all the preparation the week before.”
The adherence to Shabbat regulations may have put CESJDS’ team at a slight disadvantage — other teams could adjust their rockets the day of the competition, while Spiegel couldn’t — but Spiegel said he wished to stay committed to his values and “stay true to what we believe in.”
The unique situation even became a teachable moment for the other participants and their families.
“One mom of a kid from another team [from] California … shared how impressed she was that we were able to [achieve second place nationally] with the added responsibilities,” said Spiegel, who explained the restrictions to her. “It was a great opportunity to expose our faith and represent our faith.”
As for being the first team in CESJDS history to make the top 100 of the ARC, Spiegel hopes that he’s set an example for STEM-motivated students.
“I hope I’m not the last,” he said. “There’s always room for improvement.”
