YEAR 8 CAMPUS NEWS

WEEK EIGHT

Last weekend saw the Mercy Campus Human Powered Vehicle (HPV) team compete in the Energy Breakthrough event at Maryborough. This event has been going for 25 years and draws up to 20,000 competitors, spectators and volunteers descend on the small Central Victorian town. 2018 was the second year that the Mercy Campus entered a team into the event with mild expectations of performing better then in our first year. Although we were greeted by some unseasonal wet and windy weather on Thursday afternoon, the rain cleared in time for our first events on Friday.

The team had to first display their knowledge of the design and construction of the car, how the HPV program promotes sustainable ideas and their experiences in the program. Having completed this and checked that the Genesis Car was safe to race, it was time to prepare for our presentation about the program.

The team had been completing theory sessions since Term 2 in preparation for this followed by two Sunday sessions where they came up with a presentation style and developed their own script for a panel of three judges from the Maryborough community. Whilst confident beforehand, there were obvious signs of nerves before completing this component of the competition. These were unfounded as the team not only completed the presentation successfully but built on the work they had done previously. This was reinforced by the team’s performance in this section where they finished in 3rd place, a pleasing but still agonising 0.2 points behind the eventual joint winners of the presentation section.

After a qualification trial on Friday evening that saw the team qualify as the 70th fastest vehicle from a field of 96 (10th in our category out of 13), the main 24-hour event commenced on Saturday afternoon at 1:00pm. Early in the race, there was something different happening within the team as their lap times continued to come down as did our overall position. Students were averaging lap times of 40km/h around the 1.54 km track for a 30 minute stint, something we hadn’t seen in training.

Before long we were sitting in 4th place in our category and in 37th position overall after 4 hours of racing. Over the next 12 hours, we had a few tumbles in the vehicle and some significant damage to the exterior paint job as well as the head lights that required running repairs but as the sun came up on Sunday after 18 hours of racing, the team was tracking in 49th place overall and 6th in our category. This is where would we stay until the conclusion of the trial, a marked improvement on last year’s performance. By the end of the 24hr trial, the team had raced 696 km which was above anyone’s expectation heading into the event.

In summary, the team’s results were:

24 Hour Trial – 452 laps completed – (44th out of 96 vehicles overall and 6th out of 13 cars in our category)
Design and Construction presentation – 19.6/ 25 – 6th in our category
Display – 21.1/ 25- 3rd in our category (0.2 behind the winners)
Overall result – 5th in our category.

It has been fantastic to see the team come this far over the course of the year and continually grow and develop in ways they didn’t believe possible. A huge thanks must go to Mr John Fleming who has worked tirelessly over the past three years to get this program up and running, Mr Zac Bow and Ms Teresa Hagen for accompanying the students to Maryborough as well as Mark Baker who helped to supervise the team and transport the HPV to the race. Thanks also need to go to Mr Tim Press, Mr George Paolucci, Mr Mark Avery and Mr Michael Quin who organised theory sessions for the team throughout the year that allowed for such a strong result in the final race.

Finally, the team itself deserves the utmost congratulations for their efforts. Team captains Lila Japp and Isaac Burns led the group superbly and built a strong spirit within the team. They were ably supported by team members Julia Copley, Maddison Follett, Alyssa Marks, Memphis Baker, Santino Ribarits, Shane Pollard, Josh Zudetich, Xander Robinson and Connor Grzan as well as student coaches Airlie Arnold and Julia Sherry.

The growth of the team over the year has been satisfying to observe and the experiences in this program have developed the students cognitive, critical and social thinking skills, all areas that will leave them in good stead for the future experiences. Thanks must also go to our sponsors of the program for 2018 in LRT Transport, Coomealla Sporting and Memorial Club, Rebel Sport Mildura, Mildura Party Hire and Sunnyland Press.

We hope to continue building this program into 2019 and beyond and without sponsors like these, it won’t be able to happen. If you have any questions about becoming involved in the Human Powered Vehicle program in 2019, please don’t hesitate to ask one of this year’s team or Mr Parker and Mr Fleming about how to become involved.

Mr Marcus Parker

Head of Mercy Campus