Before the final bell of the 2024-25 school year, the sophomore class at River City Early College had one more project they wanted to accomplish — build a city. This would be a hefty task for even the most experienced urban planners, architects, developers and engineers, but with a bit of collaboration, inspiration and imagination, the students pulled it off. On May 15 they unveiled their Sophomore City, which included not only everything needed for a functioning town, but also a Top Golf complex that had been designed to the tee.

Chloe Hardy, one of the 10^th grade students, said constructing a city to scale had been 10^th grade River City Early College teacher Carolyn Bradley’s idea.

“She wanted to create a Sophomore City, just to kind of give us a big production at the end of the year,” Hardy said.

With it being the last week of school, Hardy said she and her classmates wanted to do “one more big project” so they could all work together before school was out for the summer.

“That’s what RCEC is all about. We like to work as a team and kind of just get together and make sure we have good cooperative skills as well as talking skills and, just kind of helping each other out,” Hardy said of doing class projects.

“This was a really big teamwork thing because you needed four or five people in a group depending on what part you were doing,” 10^th grade student Lachlan Lampkin said, adding that teamwork also meant talking through conflicts.

“We did have a couple of times we really had to work together and really talk through the conflicts that we were having over cardboard and stuff like that, but we came together and pulled through,” Lampkin said.

Bradley said the students implemented all phases of their course work into the project.

“They worked on some aspect of the city in all five of our classes, which was kind of cool,” Bradley said.

In chemistry the focus was on the materials that would be used. Math class focused on geometry and the mechanics of building the structures. In history Bradley said they researched cities, and in English class students used the research and wrote a story about each individual structure that made up Sophomore City.

“My class is leadership, so we talked about being a good teammate, how everybody needs to be involved — kind of doing your part,” Bradley said.

Brooke Wilbanks, one of the students at the school, said Sophomore City had been “partly” modeled off of Vicksburg, “just like the same type of town because we have old buildings and new buildings.”

In helping with Sophomore City, Bradley said students had the opportunity to hear from two speakers from the Corps of Engineers and the city of Vicksburg’s Community Development Director Jeff Richardson.

Sophomore City

Located in the back corner of the classroom where Sophomore City was being showcased was the Top Golf complex. Beau Bradley, Oden Henderson and Braxton Hartley were the students who constructed the facility. And in addition to the driving range, the students were also meticulous when it came to the smaller details that would be found at a Top Golf complex.

Little TVs had been placed in each of the constructed Top Golf suites and a parking lot had been built with toy cars parked in the bays. The guys had even made handicap parking spots.

“If you look straight down, it just looks like the real thing,” Bradley said.

The guys had admitted to spending a lot of “late nights” working on their project for Sophomore City and it was evident that other students had done the same with their projects.

Kevin Ortiz and his group constructed a Mexican Restaurant and in coming up with Cinco Amigos’s background story Ortiz said the group used their history and English skills to create a story about the restaurant, which included the establishment’s roots of originating from the city San Luis Potosi with offshoots of the eatery making its way to the U.S.

In addition to the Mexican restaurant, also included in Sophomore City was a gas station, a Kroger, a church, a courthouse, a park, homes, and a cemetery.

Also, making use of her technology skills, student Annie Tucker Hossley designed a video of the Top Golf complex.

Bradley said all 76 students in the sophomore class at River City Early College participated in the project, with each bringing his or her strongest skills to the table.

“There was something for everybody to do,” Bradley said.