2009 Mid-Pacific Conference

This year, the University of Nevada hosted the Mid-Pacific Conference (Mid-Pac). Here is a video that we made and showed at the awards banquet after the 2009 compeition:

This year, there was some tough competition from UC Berkeley and San Jose State University, but Nevada managed to qualify for the national competition by placing second overall behind Cal. We applaud UC Berkeley for their strong performance this year and we are proud to represent the Mid-Pacific Region with them at nationals. Nevada swept the races at Mid-Pac for the first time, and we are so proud of the hard work and dedication of our paddlers. However, Cal won every other category (final product, design paper, and presentation). We must admit that we thought San Jose State had everyone beat in final product for their simple and smooth canoe, Chack Mate. But the judges favored Cal's exquisite inlays that depicted images of the Bay Area, and Berkeley edged them out for first place. The scores and results from each category are listed below along with an overall point breakdown.

This year, there were some issues with Nevada's final product. We had several points deductions from our final product score because the concrete mix was illegal (ooops!) and we had to add floatation to the canoe. This year, two of the six canoes at Mid-Pac (Nevada and Sacramento State University) did not pass the floatation test and the teams were forced to take a 25 point deduction and add external floatation to their canoes. We suspect that our accelerated time frame prior to the competition forced the team to stain and seal the canoe before all of the excess water evaporated from it. In an attempt to make the canoe float in Alabama, we will place our canoe in the sun to promote the evaporation of excess water. If you see our canoe floating in Lake Nichol in June, give our team a cheer because this has been our biggest disappointment to date.

Click the following pictures to see enlarged images. To see more photos of the competition, CLICK HERE.