Two Seymour High School clubs got a boost Thursday (Oct. 12) from the Connecticut Freemasons Morning Star Lodge #47.
The lodge, on Swan Avenue in Seymour, hosted a car show Sept. 30 to benefit the Seymour High School Car Club. But when the lodge member scheduled to DJ the show had to cancel, the Seymour High School Performing Arts Club stepped up to provide the entertainment.
So when lodge members presented the proceeds from the show to the students, both the Car Club and the Chorus were presented checks.
“The DJ fell through, so the kids put together a show,” lodge member Jim Lafferty said.
His son belongs to both the car club and the Performing Arts Club, Lafferty said, so they talked to the teacher in charge of the club, who agreed to arrange for the students in the band to perform.
When it came time to disburse the $535 the event raised, they agreed they wanted to cut the Performing Arts Club in, giving them $135 and the remaining $400 to the Car Club.
“We thought it would be nice that the arts kids who threw it together get something out of it,” Lafferty said.
On Thursday afternoon, students from both clubs gathered in the foyer of the school to accept the money, which will go toward each club’s expenses.
The Car Club’s main project is the construction of an electric racing car that they race as part of the Connecticut Electrathon Race, run by Central Connecticut State University technology education students, according to Seymour High School technology teacher Michael Stock, the club’s adviser.
“It’s an endurance race,” Stock said.
The students build an electric race car that they race against other high school and college teams at Lime Rock, he said. “The students have to see how many laps the car can do within one hours time. Whoever does the most laps in one hour is the winner.”
There are 17 students in his engineering class, Stock said, and an additional 10 students are part of the Car Club that make up the Wildcat Fury Team. Freshmen year, the students learn the basics of designing and engineering, he said, and then they learn to do so on a computer.
“Then we move out into the lab and fabricate the whole thing from scratch,” he said.
Both the Performing Arts Club and Car Club students said they were happy to be involved in the lodge’s car show. Putting together a show with only a few weeks of preparation was challenging but fun, the Performing Arts Club students said.
“It was really fun, it was like a little concert,” SHS senior Hailey Hathaway said. “It was really easy because we also had class time to do it.”
“It was like a family coming in,” freshman Ariana Dlugolenski said of her introduction to the Performing Arts Club. “They were very welcoming, so the mini concert wasn’t bad. I enjoyed it a lot.”
“It was awesome,” sophomore Jana Thomas said. “We all came together we are like a family, and we all just get along and agreed with everything.”
“It was pretty astounding how well we put things together once we started working on it,” senior Aiden O’Rourke, who plays the guitar, said. “We have our chorals, but once the time comes to get things done, we can snap it together like nothing else I’ve ever seen. It’s amazing just being a part of this big family.”
Senior Mike Kuba worked on both the car and the concert. “Doing both, it’s pretty great because we get benefits both ways,” he said. “We get benefits for the music program and get benefits for our car program.
“It wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be,” he said. “We worked on the car and got it ready to show and got the songs together.”
Senior David Brezina has worked on creating the electric racing cars for the past three years.
“I played football freshmen year and an injury took me out of football,” he said. “I really wanted to be involved with the school, and this club always interested me because I can gain practical experience to use outside of high school. It naturally drew me here and I’m loving it.”
“Every single year we try to improve on the previous design, taking what worked well, what didn’t work well, how it performed in the race, and use that to improve upon the next design,” senior Ethan Teodosio said. “We are really refining how it works and how we transform it.”
He’ll be using what he learned in the Car Club long after he graduates, Teodosio said.
“There have been so many actual practical skills I’ll be able to use later on in life,” he said. “It’s taught me how to weld, it’s taught me how to use machinery that I wouldn’t have at home. It’s very practical in learning life skills.”