Santa Clara wins third place in Solar Decathlon

By Johanna Mitchell

The temperature rose to triple digits beneath the giant white tent on the National Mall Friday afternoon as hundreds of college students eagerly awaited the crowning of the 2007 Solar Decathlon champion.

The tension mounted during U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman's speech, after which he uttered two small words that made team Santa Clara's cross-country journey worth every mile: third place.

Cheers erupted as team Santa Clara, the team Bodman labeled as the "Cinderella story from California," took the stage and embraced in an enormous group hug, raising the trophy high over their heads.

The highest honor was reserved for German competitor Technische Universitat Darmstadt, who secured first place with 1,024 points out of a possible 1,200. The University of Maryland followed with 1,000 points. Santa Clara scored 980 points.

Points were accumulated during the week-long competition on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Team Santa Clara competed with 19 high-caliber technical schools in 10 scored tests simulating the daily activities of a typical American family.

Santa Clara's rise to the top three was gradual; the team started in 18th place Monday after a disappointing show in the architecture competition due in part to the university's lack of an architecture school.

But a slow start did not deflate the team's morale, which grew with the ensuing top-10 finishes in all of the remaining categories. Second place wins in the appliances and communication categories propelled the team to ninth place by Wednesday.

On Friday, the team received another second place award for the "getting around" competition, based on how many miles each team could drive an electric vehicle on energy generated by their solar house.

The team was one of five schools to receive a perfect score in cumulative hot water tasks and one of seven to score a perfect rating in energy balance.

Strong engineering and innovative bamboo I-joists helped the team edge out its competitors, exceeding the expectations of the "underdog" label they were given by the press and enjoying themselves in the process.

"I think we were the team that had the most fun," said Communications Coordinator Meghan Mooney. She added that Santa Clara also spent the most amount of time on the National Mall during the competition, visiting other homes and filling rare moments of downtime with bongo drums and team bonding.

During team Santa Clara's final meeting before the competition, professor Jorge Gonzalez -- whom Construction Manager Augustin Fonts described as part advisor, part team mascot -- took it upon himself to motivate the students by coining a phrase that quickly became the team's motto: "It's crunchy time."

Mooney and Fonts will never forget the moment when Evan Sarkisian, a senior, yelled, "Trick or treat!" to a bewildered delegation of Spanish politicians, or when the team spent several hours playing improvisational theater games with teams from Puerto Rico, Madrid and Texas A&M University.

But it wasn't all fun and games. Mooney estimates students got a mere four or five hours of sleep per night after working long hours in the humid East Coast weather.

Ten of the students shared a single hotel room during the nine-day competition, using air mattresses, chairs and the balcony as makeshift beds. The majority of their time, however, was spent on the National Mall, giving tours to both the public and CEOs of energy companies with equal enthusiasm.

Student tour guides reported that visitors overwhelmingly applauded the home's ability to be functional and comfortable, traits that Mooney said she thought were the home's biggest strengths.

As the application process for Solar Decathlon 2009 begins, members of this year's team said they hope their experience will help the next squad learn from both their successes in engineering and their struggles with architectural elements.

But for now, decathlon members must shift their attention back to classes, and readjust to life as ordinary college students in the wake of an extraordinary experience.

"After a competition like this, when you are tested in so many different areas, the world is completely open," said Mooney. "I feel capable of doing almost anything now."

Contact Johanna Mitchell at (408) 554-4546 or jjmitchell@scu.edu.