There’s a collective intake of breath from the crowd as a cardboard box drops hard to the ground. It hits with a loud thud, and the ground crew rushes to open the contraption that is supposed to protect a pumpkin after being dropped from an 11-story building. In this case, the pumpkin did not survive the fall, but there would still be about a hundred left.

The Southmoreland Alpha program participated in the annual Pumpkin Drop competition at WVU Mechanical and Aerospace engineering campus last month. This year alpha instructor Mrs. Jenna Hixson is took four student teams to the event.

“I like to see students actually interested in the fields that the events they are participating in pertains to,” said Mrs. Hixson.

The goal of the event is to use prior knowledge of subjects such as physics to create a container that will keep a pumpkin from smashing when it hits the ground after being pushed from a building on the WVU Morgantown campus. This was the 29th year that WVU  has hosted the event.

“I love going to this event every year because we get to tour the campus the same day we compete,” said student Olivia Price, 16. “It’s really cool to see WVU, especially since I get to go with my friends in Alpha.”

Price participated in the event last year with nearly the same team, and while their pumpkin survived the drop both years, they were far from being the winning team.

“Our team focused mostly on protecting the pumpkin,” said Price. “This year, we focused more on the getting the pumpkin to hit the target, since the team closest to the center with a protected pumpkin wins, but we were still about 16 feet off.”

The event gets bigger and bigger every year, now expanding to include middle and elementary school teams that are not a part of their school gifted programs. As of this year, Southmoreland still views it as an Alpha-only event. However, that could change next year.

“Even though I’m in charge of Alpha, I truly believe education should be the first thing to provide fair opportunities to students,” said Mrs. Hixson.

This year, Braden Fox, a non-Alpha student, was on a team and attended the event. Fox is interested in architecture and applied that knowledge to his team’s project.

“I helped a lot with their entry last year,” said Fox. “This year, I got approval so I could attend the event. It was way bigger than I thought. There were so many schools there, and it was a lot of fun.”