Construction Team Victory- Murrow News 8

PULLMAN- The WSU design and construction team took first place at a construction competition last Thursday. 

The competition included 1,100 students from 47 universities in this year’s Associated Schools of Construction competition. The WSU team won first place in the commercial category beating out 12 other teams. 

The win meant a lot to Jason Peschel, associate professor, program head of construction management and the Cougs coach said, “This is amazing I was, I couldn’t been more proud of the students for them to you know work through this whole situation and come together as a team and work collaboratively like they did to secure a win.”

Another person was also ecstatic with the win. “It was really really cool, really rewarding the amount of support and love that we gotten as a result has been absolutely incredible,” said Meghan Smith, WSU junior and team captain. 

Due to COVID-19, the competition had to go into a virtual format. This led to some challenges where the students had to adapt. “The kids did a wonderful job of pivoting in this environment to make the best out of what some people think is a really bad situation in terms of the virtual world for a competition like this,” Peschel said. 

Competing despite all of the challenges presented was still important to Smith and it meant a great deal to her. “It was really important to my confidence as I go into this industry to do this competition, to do it as a captain and to win first place I think was a much bigger confidence boost then I could ever imagine,” Smith said.