Concordia is sending its biggest team ever to the 46th Great Northern Concrete Toboggan Race
Bruna Guarino Moraes is captain of Concordia's Concrete Toboggan Team and VP Toboggan for the Concordia Society for Civil Engineering (CSCE).
Have you ever heard of concrete toboggans? They exist! And Concordia has a multidisciplinary team of 30-plus students that competes annually in the longest and largest Canadian undergraduate engineering competition of its kind.
The Great Northern Concrete Toboggan Race (GNCTR) is celebrating its 46th running in 2020. This year's event will be held in Toronto from January 29 to February 2.
Our team has to design and build a toboggan that can safely hold five riders with an enclosed superstructure, fully functional steering and braking systems and reinforced concrete skis as a running surface.
We also have to pick a theme. For 2020, we chose “Boggtor Seuss, The ConcoCat in the Hat.” Another important aspect is implementing innovative and sustainable practices in our ideas, such as incorporating re-used hockey sticks as our concrete reinforcement.
At GNCTR 2019, as one of 21 competing teams from all over North America, Concordia achieved some of our best results ever. That included winning the Most Sustainable Team Award and finishing first in top speed, second in best performing toboggan and third in the King of the Hill Tournament.
With such great results, we were able to expand our recruitment for this year. For the first time ever, we are bringing 30 people to the competition, tripling the number of representatives from last year and reaching the maximum number of participants allowed.
Because of this, we need substantial support and are still missing some funding to cover our expenses. If you’d like us to represent Concordia in the best way possible at GNCTR, please donate!
Our team’s most important goal is to give students the unique opportunity to put concepts learned in class into practice and to work together in multidisciplinary groups. If you’re interested in getting involved or would like to know more, follow us on Facebook and Instagram or email us at toboggan.csce@ecaconcordia.ca.
This year’s Concordia Concrete Toboggan Team:
- Captain: Bruna Guarino Moraes
- Vice-captain: Manuel Tapia
- Spirit captain: Shaan Popowich
- Civil lead: David Burton
- Concrete mix team: Widad Fawaz, Sandra Ristovic, Francisco Andres Salazar, Samy Ben Thabet, Ahmed M’sallem and Evis Zeka
- Reinforcement team: Natasha Morhan, Kamelya Aralova, Tilesh Koobrawa, Farshad Nasirian and Afsana Habib
- Ski design team: Samuel Sifton, Natasha Morhan and Tilesh Koobrawa
- Superstructure lead: Marc Gedeon
- Superstructure team: Kate Roche, Eli Dannenbaum, Alexander Spinali, Erika Coté and Eslam Othman
- Steering lead: Alexander Spinali
- Steering team: Nicolas Albano, Matthew McMillan and Samuel Sifton
- Braking leads: Caroline Schyle and Raphael Cininni
- Braking team: Jasmin Singh, Evan Gerard and Nicolas Dhe Paganon
- Arts lead: Samantha Leger
- Arts team: Jose Garcia, Francisco Andres Salazar, Kate Roche, Farshad Nasirian, Natasha Morhan and Kamelya Aralova
- Management team: Ronaldine Brazier (finance), Courtney Hargray (logistics) and Manuel Tapia (marketing)
Find out more about how to support this year’s Concordia Concrete Toboggan Team.
