Pointed tip or box end? That was the question facing boat designers at the Lawton Public Schools cardboard boat race at Rinehart Fitness Center on Fort Sill.
Participants were elementary students in Makerspace classes who made mini model boats and tested them before building a life-size boat on race day. The concept for the boat race is simple: choose a design, bring some cardboard, receive two rolls of duct tape and build your boat in three hours or less. Then put it in the pool at Rinehart Fitness Center and see who can make it to the other end in the fastest time.
Or see which boat sinks first.
Fifteen teams made up of about five students each converged on Rinehart Fitness Center on April 17 to test their theories. Some, like the team from Freedom Elementary School, had made mini boat models before race day to test their designs.
Riley Hughes, from Freedom, explained how her team decided on a boat with a pointed bow. She and her teammates made several mini boats of different designs out of snack boxes and put weights in the boats to resemble their body weights. They then put the 5-inch by 5-inch boats on a tray of water, blew on them to make them move, and observed how each design performed.
Once they had the designs narrowed down to a couple, they built two big models, which they tested to make sure water wouldn’t get through and to see where the weak spots would be. Most of the boats didn’t have any water in them, Hughes explained.
The team decided the boat with the sharp tip at the front would perform better.
“If you fold it a certain way, you won’t have too many cuts. Too many cuts or bend it too much, you won’t have enough air to keep it afloat,” Hughes said, adding the biggest concern was trying to avoid weak spots.
Hughes said the key to building the boat was “trying to find right measurements and make the least amount of mistakes as possible.”
The Woodland Hills team also chose to go with a pointed bow design.
“It will make me go faster and water will glide better,” Lilly Dolman, pilot, said. “We built a practice one of these and I got in. I put it in the swimming pool at my house. It worked pretty good. After a few minutes it folded in half so we put extra cardboard in the bottom.” Dolman said the entire bottom of the boat was covered in tape in order to keep leaks out.
The team also learned a lesson from last year’s race.
“Last year we folded it like that so it makes us faster. We put an extra piece of cardboard in the bottom so it won’t cave in. We taped it down,” Dolman said.
The Hugh Bish team decided to go another route.
“We chose the box design. If we had chosen the pointed tip, it would have more of a chance for it to tip over,” Annalise Pulaski said. She said the team made two models, one with a point at the end and one with a rounded top.
“The one that worked best was the one with the rounded top. It didn’t tip over and it didn’t fall. It went an OK amount of speed. It didn’t go as fast as the pointed tip, but the pointed tip could tip over,” Pulaski said.
Once the boats had been assembled and lunch consumed, it was time to make the trek to the pool for the competition. Four heats were conducted, with the fastest time determining the winner. Boats were carefully lowered into the water and steadied by lifeguards in the water before the student pilots, complete with life jackets, climbed aboard. A few boats immediately began to sink with Edison taking the Davy Jones award for the fastest sinking. The boat lasted all of three seconds before taking on too much water and dumping its pilot into the pool.
Pilots had 3 minutes to paddle to the opposite end of the pool; most boats either sank or made it in the time limit. One exception was Alexa Shelley from Sullivan Village Elementary. Her box-shaped boat stayed afloat, but was not the speediest one in the pool. Shelley, sporting a pirate hat, valiantly kept paddling toward the finish line until time was called.
When all the heats were run, Freedom Fury with pilot Hughes at the helm, was declared the 2026 winner.
“I felt like I was swimming normally at swim practice,” she said after winning. “Being a swimmer helped. I had lots of experience.”
Did the boat design help?
“I think it made it faster,” she said.
Boat race winners
• Freedom Fury
• Pioneer Park and Eisenhower Elementary
• Woodland Hills
Davy Jones Award
For fastest sinking
Edison
Aesthetic
• Lincoln
• Cleveland
• Almor West
Engineering Notebook
• Eisenhower Elementary
• Pioneer Park
• Lincoln
Recycled boat
• Pioneer Park
• Woodland Hills
• Freedom