Spaghetti bridge experts

Justin Dessert and Hanya Riddick have gotten pretty good at making bridges out of pasta.

For the second year in a row, the pair of Grade 9 students from Lumby's Charles Bloom Secondary School took the top spot at Okanagan College's annual spaghetti bridge heavyweight competition, taking home a cool $1,500.

Dessert and Riddick's bridge held 223.63 kilograms before finally buckling under the weight in explosive fashion. Their bridge held about 30 kg less than their similar design did last year, but this year's was more than 200 grams lighter.

Their bridge held more than 60 kg more than the second place bridge.

While the $1,500 prize was great, the added bonus for Justin of beating his older brother, who came second, was a nice cherry on top.

As impressive as Dessert and Riddick's bridge was, the record over the competition's 35-year history sits at 443 kg.

“We see some alumni who are now teaching who bring their classes down every year,” said Allan Coyle, Okanagan College's director of public affairs.

“They get to be excited about applying the concepts of physics, a little bit of mathematics, engineering. We've had people who started years ago coming to these competitions who ended up going through our civil engineering technology diploma program.”

While Justin bought a bike with his share of the cash prize last year, the pair are not too sure what they'll be doing with their newly-won fortune.