His big break
With catapult and a close splat, crack contestant lands college scholarship
Grade A large eggs are raining from the blue sky, polka-dotting the concrete around the frying pan with bright yellow yolk.
Forty-eight feet away, Jeff Costa approaches the firing range like a pro golfer lining up a putt. He pulls out a level to better position his home-made trebuchet, a medieval-style catapult used to hurl projectiles.
He triggers the sling. The raw egg soars 25 feet above the hushed crowd and just misses the skillet.
Splat.
Although Costa, a senior at Old Rochester Regional High School, didn't hit the target, his sharpshooting last Saturday helped him win a $15,000 annual scholarship to Merrimack College. "Unbelievable," he said as he clutched a big mock check for the prize money. "It's like winning the lottery."
Costa, 18, beat four other high school students to claim victory in Merrimack College's first egg catapult contest, a good-natured competition with a serious underlying purpose.
The contest, which the college hopes will help recruit engineering students and promote engineering in general, came on the heels of a coup for the engineering department.
This month a student construction team beat peers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Connecticut in the New England regional competition to design and build a steel bridge. The team is heading to the
Gary S. Spring, professor and chairman of civil engineering at Merrimack College, said he hopes to make the egg catapult contest an annual event to inspire 11th- and 12th-graders to pursue engineering.
"The catapult competition is all about recruitment," said Spring. "We believe that once we get people here, we're halfway there. This place is really a treasure." Costa's victory clearly raised Merrimack's attractiveness in the eyes of his parents, Michael and Roxanne Costa.
"This definitely seals it," his mother said of Jeff's college choice.
"I think my heart stopped," his father said. "It will make a big difference."
The cost of attending Merrimack College, including tuition, room, board, and fees, is $41,800 for 2007-2008. Merrimack, a Catholic college, enrolls about 2,000 full-time students, with 80 percent living on campus.
Last Saturday, anyway, egg hurling turned into quite a spectator sport, with more than 100 people showing up or stopping by to witness the event. Scoring was based on accuracy, design, presentation, and adherence to a $50 spending cap for materials.
The catapults were modeled after traditional counterweight trebuchets, those medieval weapons of war used to throw large stones on the battlefield and to attack fortress walls. For the contest, the catapults could be as big as 3 feet by 3 feet, and as high as 8 feet.
Competitors were given three shots, the first being a practice shot, and the remaining two the official launches.
Patrick Wittbold, an 18-year-old senior at North Andover High School, took second place and won a $5,000 annual scholarship to Merrimack. He said he was inspired by the nature of the contest and the scholarship money.
"You get to fling things, which is the best part," he said, laughing, before a practice round outside the Sakowich Campus Center.
Costa's most accurate shot landed 20 inches from the center of the frying pan.
Wittbold's best shot landed 48 inches from the center, according to the judges.
Eric Kanopkin, a 17-year-old from Randolph High School, placed third and won a $1,000 check to the college bookstore.
The runners -up, 16-year-old Michael Horton of Hanover and 16-year-old Josh Buchsbaum of Marblehead, received sweatshirts for participating.
None of the five fired a shot that landed in the frying pan. Kanopkin said the task is tougher than it looks. "It's hard to figure out because there are so many variables."
Horton, who competes on his high school's robotics team, said he probably would have calibrated his catapult better if he had more time. "It's pretty fun," he said. "Before, we were shooting it 80 feet."
The students share a passion for building, creating, and tinkering. A potato gun is among Buchsbaum's inventions.
"I like making things that go bang," he said, grinning.
Buchsbaum had the crowd grinning with an errant second shot, the egg flinging backward where it smashed into the glass-paneled wall, yolk streaming down its side.
"It happens," said Buchsbaum, who attributed the misfire to his design. He originally created the sling pouch to throw tennis balls, not eggs.
Costa has been assembling and disassembling things all his life, his father said. He said the family's yard, not far from where the younger of his two children built a tree house 40 feet high, is strewn with construction material.
In practicing for the contest, Costa said, he went through 16 dozen eggs -- that's 192 splats.
He won for accuracy as well as for the design and aesthetics of his catapult. He even painted it in Merrimack College colors and tacked on a "Warrior" flag logo to the sides.
Costa said his attention to detail was worth the effort. At the awards ceremony, he said he was just trying to stay calm and resist pumping his fists in the air.
Smiling, he added, "I knew my mom would do that for me." 