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GREENDALE - Most eighth graders are focused on school and their friends but four students at St. Alphonsus Parish School won a competition that may put them on the fast track to a bright future.

"Nani Moko is beautiful island in Hawaiian," Rob Gueldner explains to TODAY’S TMJ4’s Jesse Ritka.  A beautiful name for a futuristic city built to inspire green ideas and create a way to clean storm water runoff.   It almost sounds simple the way eighth grader Aaron Moll explains it, “When the rain water pours on our different layers of the model, it would flow down the layers and go down into our reservoirs and streams and then it would collect in the reservoir so it can be purified and sent down to the aquifer so then it can be used as fresh drinking water.”

But this wasn’t a school assignment, and Rob Gueldner, Aaron Moll, Raven Hall and Katie Arnold won’t get a grade.  "It was a choice project," declares Gueldner.

The group presented their project at the Regional National Engineers Week Future City competition and won a trip to nationals in Washington D.C. to represent our region.  "I'm really excited about DC because we get to meet people from all around the country," exclaimed Raven Hall.

But this entire experience goes a lot further than the capitol for the Greendale students, Katie Arnold picked up life skills as well, "I learned a lot about engineering, a lot about water systems, and public speaking, I really developed that."  And the project helped Raven solidify what she wants to do in the future, "It kind of inspired me to become an engineer."

Their ideas may become reality some day, even ideas sparked from this project Aaron Moll says, "I think they can because it's a very innovative system and it might not be able to be used in Milwaukee but it definitely can be used in other cities throughout the world."

Aaron’s dad, and the group’s volunteer mentor, couldn’t be more proud of the result of the 150 plus hours each student put in to this project.  "These are the kids that you want to see, the motivated kids, the kids that are smart that want to excel and that's what you hope you have as future engineers," says Scott Moll.  And after this project and competition, Aaron, Katie, Raven and Rob may just be exactly that.