This contest wasn’t just about speed, or style, or creativity, or engineering integrity, or wit. (Although those attributes earned points.)

Riverdale’s Lindy 500 this year honored sustained effort, and the winning entry, The High-Top, earned its place through hours of out-of-class time on designing and building a fleeter sneaker.

Named for the school’s Linda M. Lindenbaum Center for the Arts, the event was the brainchild of Josh Merrow, the school’s STEM integrator and teacher of the Middle and Upper School design engineering courses. Students collected old bicycles and scooters and built their sculptures out of wood, chicken wire, paper mache, cardboard, and junk parts.

The race took place on the last day of classes on school lawn. Entries included the fifth grade’s Brainmobile, the Middle School’s El Tácó, and the Upper School’s Hamster as well as a pirate ship, a chariot, a sofa, the Aquatic Dragon of Ni, among others.