Senior Spotlight

Alisha Holder is a senior at Houston High School where she has been an HHS Diamond Girl for four years, and she is in the Beta club and Anchor club. She has been on the Sundancer team since her freshman year. She has gone to many places including the Texas Motor Speedway twice, New York and Australia. Alisha is going to attend EMCC in the fall.

Junior Spotlight

Will Turman is a junior at Houston High School where he is a member of the tennis team and Beta club. He has been on the Solar Race team since he was a freshman and has been to four races. He plans to go to Ole Miss when he graduates college and major in electrical engineering.

Almost There!

Finally after months of testing and building, our new car is almost ready! At last we are able to put the array and solar panels on! It takes a lot of patience and tedious work to plan and place our solar cells; however, the team is well up to the challenge. We are extremely excited to see everything come together so nicely.

Senior Spotlight

Zack Huffman is a senior at Houston High School where he is the captain of the Sundancer Solar Race team, Beta president, Student Council president, a student member of Technology Commission for Houston School District and recently he has participated in our school Dream Girl pageant as a dancer for the Houston Community Theatre. Zack volunteers for the Salvation Army as a bell ringer, Project Noel, Relay for Life, Pennies for St. Jude, the Trash Bash, and he was an Election Campaign volunteer. He attends Church of Christ in Houston where he is the Vacation Bible school coordinator and the Church Education coordinator. Zack has gone to Austrailia, New York, and the Texas Motor Speedway with the Sundancer. This is his second year to be team captain. His future plans include going to Law School at Ole Miss and then becoming the President of the United States in 2036.

Hands Where I Can See Them!

What started out as a routine meeting turned out to be a very eventful night. New advancements were made on the car so we decided to take it out for a quick test drive through our town. We loaded up in the back of Big Red, called the police for an escort, and away we went. We didn't get very far before we noticed the back tire was flat. We pulled over in a vacant parking lot and our team was quick to fix the problem! We were back on the road in no time when we saw the Chief of Police quick on our tail. We were speeding! The speed limit was 15 and our car was topping out at 50 mph! Our team was dumbfounded and extremely excited! All of our hard work had paid off. The only problem was we didn't have our drivers licenses. We were so quick to leave the school none of us had our purses or wallets. A few of our members had to be taken away and one of them even tried to escape! Sundancer proves once more that anything is possible!

Whitney trying to make the escape and get the handcuffs off.

Thomas had the right to remain silent....but he didn't have the ability!

Put your hands where I can see them!

Just kidding! None of our members were really arrested.

We would love to show the police officers of Houston our deep appreciation for being so supportive and cooperative of our team. Without them we would not be able to be so successful!

Flywheel Festival

As the school year comes closer to coming to an end, the race is getting that much closer. We have various things planned for the next few weeks as we prepare for the challenge this summer. Houston is known for our hospitality in hosting the Flywheel Festival every year and this year the team is going to have a special guest. We are very excited about Mr. David Hearne attending and getting to meet our new team members. His book Hulagu's Web features the Sundancer Solar Race team. We are very excited about this venture and getting to know Mr. Hearne better. We will be posting a link on our web site soon so you can check out the book and have the opportunity to purchase your own copy of Hulagu's Web!

As March comes to an end and April begins the anticipation is becoming unbearable! We have started testing one of our cars for scruitneering. Here are a few pictures of us begining the process. Please continue keeping track of us on our blog as we continue making advancements on our cars.

With February over, we are another month closer to the Dell-Winston Solar Challenge, and we are staying busy. The team is turning in intents to race and preparing the applications.While our solar car members remain active in the Sundancer program, they are also involved in other school activities. Josh Griffin is perhaps one of the most active. He participates in the school's baseball team as well as cross-country. This past fall, Josh walked away the 2008 3-A boys State Cross-Country Champion.

Greetings from team Sundancer! With 2009 well underway, we realize that we have only five short months to prepare for the race in July. We have currently been training our new teammates and are thrilled with their progress. The team will only be returning five veterans this year. Like always, Sundancer is ecstatic to attend the race and be with the solar car family. Good Luck to all!

CHRISTMAS TIME!

The Christmas season is here and we are all ready for our vacation away from school! Never the less, our team is still hard at work whether we are modifying our car or participating in Christmas events. We were recently in the Tupelo Christmas parade and also in our town's parade. We would like to again thank everyone who is involved in our solar car program and wish everyone a HAPPY HOLIDAYS and MERRY CHRISTMAS!

GOBBLE GOBBLE!!!

The SUNDANCER TEAM would like to wish all our sponsors, fans, friends, and family a HAPPY THANKSGIVING. We are so appreciative of all the support and good wishes you have given us over the years. It is this time of year that we as people need to give thanks to special people in our lives. THE SUNDANCER TEAM thinks that you are all special people. We are all still busy and have big plans for the future. Keep up with our progress on the blog. Once again:
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

Sundancer Meets Starkville Middle School

We were so excited to meet a few of the bright minds from Starkville Middle School. We were able to discuss their toy project and how to achieve all of their goals.

OUR RUN TO MEMPHIS

We had our second training run Sept. 26-27. We left out of Houston a little later than we had planned so we didn't get as much driving time in as we had hoped for. Despite the lack of driver training we all got a little of the"cross country" experience. We were planning on camping on the side of the road wherever we stopped. We have done this before so as we unloaded our luggage and set up our tents, we didn't think anything about it. When we were finished we all wanted to go eat so we loaded up on the bus and headed for the nearest roadhouse, of course! Later that night when we returned to our campsite we had a police officer waiting on us. He informed us that what we were doing was too dangerous and they would not allow us to camp on the side of the interstate.. imagine that?! We informed him that we had done this several times before, but it didn't matter. We HAD to leave. As much as we hated it, we had to go find a hotel, sleep in an actual bed, and take a shower. The next day we got up bright and early to start charging the car. When we left the hotel we set out toward Graceland. Thomas Brown drove Sundancer all the way from our hotel to Graceland. As soon as we got there we set the car up to charge while we toured Graceland and did some souvenir shopping. All in all our team had a wonderful time! ..we even initiated our new members.

SUNDANCER meets ATK

This past Wednesday our Solar Car team had the opportunity to visit ATK in Iuka, Mississippi. ATK specializes in making composite materials that are used for a variety of things. One of their recent productions was the delivery of the Delta Launch vehicle. ATK is also a leading provider of small and micro-satellites. This innovative company is leading the way in exploring a new frontier in space with lightweight materials, such as composite. We had the privilege to meet with them and discuss ways to improve and redesign our solar car. They were extremely helpful and we hope to continue working with them! We can not tell them thank-you enough for all of their help!

Community Welcome Home Celebration

We had a great outcome at our community welcome celebration. It was wonderful to see our town come out and show their support after our victory. We presented a powerpoint of this summer's race and each of the members shared a memory or two. We once again would like to thank our wonderful community for all of their support for our team.

We safely arrived from Texas with no time for rest, it was back to the shop for the team. Our summer schedules have been full of media events, including an interview with MTV's Street Team '08 (link posted below), civic club meetings, and discussing the future of our team. We are currently in the redesigning stage of the Sundancer II. After eight consecutive victories, we are retiring Sundancer I. We intend to race in the advanced division at the upcoming race next July. We are excited about the upcoming celebration event being organized by our wonderful community supporters and steering committee members. It is scheduled for Sunday, August 10, from 3:00 to 4:30 in the Houston High School auditorium. We are preparing a presentation including photos from this summer's race. We appreciate your support and hope that you come out to see us.
MTV Video Link:
http://houston.k12.ms.us/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://think.mtv.com/044FDFFFF0098A0BE001700991012/

THANK-YOU to TERRELL, TEXAS

The day that we were scheduled to come home from the race, we had an accident in the bus about thirty miles outside of Dallas, Texas. This delayed our return home almost two days. We had no idea what we were going to do or even how we were going to transport about twenty-five people to the nearest hotel. Luckily, the town that we were in, Terrell, Texas, was extremely friendly and more than helpful. They not only provided us with transportation, but they also treated us to lunch and a movie. We are also from a small town, so it was great to have that same hospitality so far away from home. We don't know what we would have done without them. Our team is so thankful they were there to help us. We want them to know that we appreciate what they did very much and we will never forget their hospitality. If we had to choose the place where we wanted to break down again, it would definitely be there! THANKS FOR EVERYTHING!

*We also owe another thanks to Dana Skelton, the fine art and district project manager, and his wife for* helping us find a hotel.

The team posing for a picture. Thank-you to Debbi Gamble with the Terrell Tribune for being interesting in our team and our solar car.

Another thank-you to Don Ledbetter, the General Manager of Student Transportation for the Durham School District, and to Shemika, our always friendly bus driver who took us wherever we needed to go.

She was there to pick us up on the side of the road after our accident.

AWARD'S BANQUET

Through our efforts and team work we placed 1st in the Open Division, 1st in the Classic Division, as well as several daily trophies and a GE Engineering Award.

Sundancer Taking A Victory Lap Around The Track

JUDGES ALL AROUND

Our team would like to recognize all the judges that helped in the Dell-Winston Solar Challenge. We appreciate all that you do in making our time there safe and enjoyable.