MTSU concrete students compete for international bowling ball crown [+VIDEO]

From left, Middle Tennessee State University Concrete Industry Management students Tyler Dixon, Kayla Gates, Ashley Gates, Christian Denton, Joe Bell, Clay Karsner, Jerry Stewart and Adam Currie have been part of CIM Director Jon Huddleston’s 12-member class preparing concrete bowling balls for an international competition that’s part of the American Concrete Institute Convention in San Francisco, Calif., April 2-6 at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square. The team will compete April 2. (MTSU photo by Randy Weiler)

Six Middle Tennessee State University Concrete Industry Management students will be hoping to “strike” it big this weekend when they compete in an international bowling ball competition in San Francisco, California.

Representing a dozen students in their upper division “Special Problems in the Concrete Industry” class, the students will be entering the American Concrete Institute’s Student Fiber-Reinforced Concrete Bowling Ball Competition from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. PT Sunday, April 2, in the Grand Ballroom of the Hilton San Francisco Union Square.

Middle Tennessee State University Concrete Industry Management junior Jerry Stewart of Murfreesboro, left, smooths the rough edges off a concrete bowling ball as fellow junior Christian Denton of Medina, Tenn., observes recently outside the School of Concrete and Construction Management Building CIM laboratory. Six MTSU students will take their best two concrete bowling balls to the 2023 American Concrete Institute’s Student Fiber-Reinforced Concrete Bowling Ball Competition Sunday, April 2. (MTSU photo by Randy Weiler)

MTSU students will be competing against engineering and concrete students from around the world — including Middle Eastern and Asian teams — to form and construct the bowling balls and send the concrete ball down a ramp to try to knock down bowling pins. They will also try to impress the judges, who will break open a second submitted ball to determine if the weight and contents meet guidelines.

Jon Huddleston, MTSU Concrete Industry Management director — Jon Huddleston

Jon Huddleston, CIM director, said an MTSU team won the competition in 2012.

“Our students have been working extremely hard in preparation for this contest,” he said. “They’ve been organized, communicated and work well together.”

Clay Karsner, a senior CIM major from Danville, Kentucky, said the team has good camaraderie, is driven and added “we’re all pretty confident. We’ve come up with a good (concrete) mix so far. We’re looking forward to seeing how we do.”

Karsner said the competition “is based on weight, diameter, strength test at five different intervals and the ball being able to roll straight to try to hit six pins. If it rolls to the right, you can adjust. Ours pretty much rolls straight.”

Middle Tennessee State University Concrete Industry Management students (from left) Tyler Dixon, Kayla Gates, Ashley Gates, Christian Denton, Joe Bell, Clay Karsner, Jerry Stewart and Adam Currie have been part of CIM Director Jon Huddleston’s 12-member class preparing concrete bowling balls for an international competition that’s part of the American Concrete Institute Convention in San Francisco, Calif., April 2-6 at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square. The team will compete April 2. (MTSU photo by Randy Weiler) — From left, Middle Tennessee State University Concrete Industry Management students Tyler Dixon, Kayla Gates, Ashley Gates, Christian Denton, Joe Bell, Clay Karsner, Jerry Stewart and Adam Currie have been part of CIM Director Jon Huddleston’s 12-member class preparing concrete bowling balls for an international competition that’s part of the American Concrete Institute Convention in San Francisco, Calif., April 2-6 at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square. The team will compete April 2. (MTSU photo by Randy Weiler)

The students, who made about 12 balls in the process of selecting the best two to take with them, began collaborating in January when the spring semester began.

“We spent two to three weeks on mix design,” Karsner said. “Then we worked on a casting design. We took some of the mixes and started casting into molds. We used five or six mixes and different aggregates, fiber and cement.”

From left, Middle Tennessee State University Concrete Industry Management students Tyler Dixon, Ashley Gates and Joe Bell — all from Murfreesboro — check the fiber content of a concrete bowling ball they made and tested for the upcoming international competition a group of six students will compete in Sunday, April 2, in San Francisco, Calif., during the ACI Convention. The upper division class made the balls in the new CIM laboratory in the 54,000-square-foot School of Concrete and Construction Management Building, which opened in October. (MTSU photo by Randy Weiler)

Other team members making the trip include junior Jerry Stewart of Murfreesboro and formerly from Stanton, Michigan, a student veteran who is president of the Student Veterans of America B.R.A.V.O., or Blue Raider American Veterans Organization; senior twin sisters Ashley and Kayla Gates of Murfreesboro; junior Caleb Perkins of Greenville, Michigan; and senior Joe Bell of Murfreesboro.

Karsner, who will graduate in May, has had three internships with Lexington, Kentucky-based Gray Construction and will work for them full time after earning his degree.

Several other class members could not attend because of a prior commitment.

Concrete Industry Management is part of the School of Concrete and Construction Management in the College of Basic and Applied Sciences.

— Randy Weiler (Randy.Weiler@mtsu.edu)