A bridge to the ‘real world’

By Harold Gwin

The team members moved with precision in putting their bridge together.

YOUNGSTOWN — The Youngstown State University steel bridge building team was all “high fives” and “knuckle banging” after a practice run-through showed they put their bridge together in just six minutes.

That’s not a world record time, but it was very good for the annual American Society of Civil Engineers regional competition Friday in YSU’s Beeghly Center.

The YSU team was one of about 15 from colleges in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Kentucky competing for the right to advance to the national event in Gainesville, Fla., over Memorial Day.

Getting to put what they’ve learned in the classroom into real-world practice “is really rewarding,” said YSU team captain Mike Lyda of North Lima, a senior.

Assembling the bridge quickly is just one measurement the structure goes through in the competition. There are exact specifications to be met, aesthetics to be considered, and the span, at 20 feet long, must be able to safely support 2,500 pounds of dead weight.

The YSU team had a legacy to live up to. Last year’s team placed first in the regional competition at Ohio State University and went on to finish 11th in nationals.

The team had the fastest assembly time — 2 minutes and 20 seconds — at the national event at California State University in Northridge.

“We’re fairly confident,” Lyda said as his team awaited its turn to perform for the judges. They’ve put together and dismantled the bridge “hundreds” of times to hone their timing and precision, he said. That practice showed as the team moved like a well-oiled machine in assembling the span.

Lyda said the team began designing the structure last June and began actual fabrication in November.

“We do 100 percent of the work,” he said, noting that the bridge was built in a machine shop on campus.

Other members of the team are Mike Meder, a junior from Pittsburgh; Dan Phillips, a freshman from Geneva, Ohio; Mark Delisio, a senior from Boardman; Brian Kopachy, a senior from Youngstown; and Tyler Mercer, a senior from Pittsburgh.

The team from the University of Dayton, the first to compete Saturday, had a group of supporters gather in Beeghly’s balcony just above them as they assembled their bridge and began adding the free weights.

The students broke into cheers as the last few weights were added.

“This is our best year so far,” said Dayton’s captain, Tim Truster, a senior from Hamilton, Ohio.

It’s his third year with the team. Last year’s bridge fell 300 pounds short of the weight-bearing requirement, he said.

Their assembly time wasn’t great — about 46 minutes — but Truster said it was the first time the team ever fully assembled the bridge.

“Each year, we come down to the wire,” he said, adding, “We put a lot of time into it.”

The team members from Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Ky., said they drove more than eight hours to get to YSU. They had their bridge parts all laid out on the Beeghly gym floor, awaiting their turn to compete.

Western Kentucky teams have been competing in bridge building for at least 15 or 20 years, said team co-captain Brad Hall, a senior from Logan County, Ky., predicting that this year’s effort would be among the top competitors.

They can assemble their bridge in 51‚Ñ2 minutes and it has been load-tested to exceed the 2,500-pound requirement, said his co-captain, Matt White, a senior from Nashville.

Getting to build a bridge and take it to competitions is exciting, White said.

Building bridges is only one of the regional events.

Students also built concrete canoes for a competition at Pine Lake today and there are events in water treatment design, AutoCAD computer drafting, land surveying and more.

gwin@vindy.com