Up on the housetop, click, click, click, Brittany Hartmann ’13, MAT ’14 is blasting St. Nick.

Really, she is.

The Pacific University lacrosse coach and alumna was among a select group that launched Santa Claus, a Christmas tree and a snowman aloft in Rocket Around the Xmas Tree, a televised competition on the Discovery Channel and the Science Channel in 2020.

Click to Watch: Meet Brittany & Jordan in this Discovery Channel video

Hartmann, a former female athlete of the year at Pacific, teamed with her former colleague Jordan Slavish on Team Missile Toes. The pair, who worked together as founders of the rocketry program at Yamhill-Carlton High School in Yamhill, Oregon, hoped to rise to the holiday occasion on national television. Slavish still teaches at Yamhill-Carlton, but Hartmann now is Pacific’s full-time lacrosse coach and strength and conditioning coach, though she still volunteers with the high school’s rocketry program.

“I love building things and blowing things up,” said Hartmann. 

When the show’s producers first reached out to the pair, Hartmann and Slavish were intrigued. They were flown to Virginia for 10 days of shooting, then flown home again under orders not to discuss the outcome of the competition.

While America watched to find out which team propelled Santa — and the snowman, and the Christmas tree — the farthest, Hartmann replicated the experiment with students back home. 

Hartmann’s students planned to launch rockets that reach 22,000 feet, or about 4.2 miles high. They required FAA waivers and a lot of empty landscape, which the team found near Brothers, Ore. Hartmann said the Discovery Channel set a ceiling of 3,500 feet — not high enough for Santa to achieve exit velocity. But she said she still had fun doing rocketry on television.

“I’m excited. It’s a blast,” Hartmann said.

“I know that’s a terrible pun.”