This year’s homecoming cardboard boat race had nearly 25 student organizations and attracted over 200 students, family members, and MSU alumni to Sikes Lake, Oct. 26 at 6 p.m.

First place went to the team paddling for Kappa Alpha and Chi Omega, the Engineers for a Sustainable World came in second and last but not least the Caribbean Students Organization came in third place to finish up the competition.

“There were way more boats this year for sure. Everyone was more surprised that so many of the students did make it to the end,” Ruby Arriaga, coordinator of student activities and university programing board adviser, said. “I think the students learned from the previous years and they decided to mix it up a little bit; whether it was building a bigger boat, or a more stable boat or depending on how they used the materials that they had.”

Jedesh Chandrasegaran, mechanical engineering senior, and his boating partner Jacob Hawkins, mechanical engineering junior, are from the environmental student organization team and said they had to approach the competition differently this time around.

“Last time, we were sinking and [were] the last ones and this time we came in second,” Chandrasegaran said. “We spent a lot of time together and we had good team coordination. I need to thank all the members and the whole committee because they helped us so much. We put at least 40 hours of work into this… this time we took about three weeks and we did a lot of calculations and estimates.”

Sarah Krahl, education senior, and Leslie Landa, pre-med sophomore, said they managed to complete the course even took note of where they could have to improve for next year’s competition.

The creator of their boat, Ismael Miranda engineering junior, said, “It took me at least five hours, a hundred dollars worth of [duct] tape, a lot of folding, creasing, and stressing out, but I built it in two nights. It is a pretty simple design and I thought it would be fun. I honestly wish I didn’t procrastinate and I had more time because I could’ve made a better design.”

According to Arriaga, the boat race and the parade are one of the bigger competitive homecoming activities with higher earning points in the competition between student organizations. This was one of the reasons the event was such a huge success.

“It is a tradition here on campus,” Arriaga said. “It’s one of the things getting the student organizations together and partnering up trying to win the homecoming competition. It went really well and this year was great because we actually had a lot of water [since] it rained before hand. We look forward to next year.”