Energy Breakthrough

After a long hiatus, the Energy Breakthrough team competed in the 2024 Energy Breakthrough event in Maryborough.

This year with determination the team of teachers; Yvonne Benson, Leah-anne Reid and John Francis gathered the students to commence the preparation for the event.  The hardest task was overcoming “What is Energy Breakthrough?”.  The students really need to see it to understand it. It is sort of like riding a bike, only a bit more complicated.  See the link: https://youtu.be/YS0AUkxvBZ4?si=VvMHlkLdtcTfxwmg

The trikes can go up to 60km/h under human power, with 10 gears and you have levers to steer rather than handlebars.  You are protected by a metal frame and a covering that can be made of various materials – ours are made of fibreglass. The lighter you can make your components, the more competitive you can be (but this does cost some significant dollars!).

The students have done a significant amount of work this year. We started in Term 3, for the event is held in November. We started with a huge clean out of the EB shed.  Then started the reorganising. Eventually we were able to start work on the bikes, repair riding shoes with new cleats and teach the students how to click their cleated shoes into the cleat pedals – this was a whole skill for them to learn in itself! It was hard work teaching the students what they had to do with their feet.  The students were overloaded with information understanding the cleats, gears, levers (instead of handle bars), a horn (instead of a bell), mirrors to see anyone overtaking you), being so low to the ground and changing 10 gears. Each bike changes gears differently too.  It took a while, but riding up and down the back lane of the school during lunchtimes, after school at the Haddon race track, and Test and Tune days, helped the students prepare. They did an amazing job.

Finally, game day.  The truck, trailers and bus were packed and we were on our way to the event. We took two teams and two trikes – the "Rodent" and the "Southern Spirit". The junior team was six Year 7 students and the senior team was 8 students from  Years 8, 9, 10 & 12.

The high temperatures of 37 degrees were hard on the teams and nothing had prepared us for that!  Summer had arrived with vengeance and stayed with us the entire four days! 

On the Thursday and Friday, we were kept busy with each student doing 2 hours of volunteer work for sustainability – one hour was directing the public to divide their rubbish into the correct bin – yellow, red, purple or blue according the type of rubbish. The other hour was restocking the reusable cutlery for the vendors, by using reusable cutlery, this saved a lot of plastic rubbish going into the bins and waste saving our planet. 

We also had to complete check in, scrutineering of the trikes (which checks the safety knowledge of the students and the safety and weight of the bikes as well as their riding gear) and the students made their presentations to the judges. 

On Friday night there was a two-hour practice on the track which gives them night time experience and knowledge of bends and turns of this track. The practice run gave them a placing on the grid for Saturday’s 24-hour race of 14th position for the seniors and 50th for the junior bike.  John and I put the junior bike into place and prep talked Cecilia as first

rider in the bike, as you can see in this photo. Later you see she earned her own return to pits stick she is proudly wearing. 

Fortunately, the senior’s grid position was right in front of the Ballarat High School’s pit, as the bike needed a new frame at the last minute. 

We had two ex-students come and help us this year, and with 15 minutes to go before the race it was identified that our frame had been bent during the practice. Ex students from all over the event descended upon the Ballarat High School pits to help.  Everyone was picking up tools and helping to change over the frames. The bike was together again, lifted over the orange barriers and put into place in the grid JUST as the pacing car started to move! Whew! How amazing are our students and ex-students are!

Our teams rode all night.  The captains organising the schedule of who would ride when, how long and when their team members would sleep, how and who would wake them. The students were amazing.  The Juniors and Seniors worked as one team.  The staff were a little concerned for the junior team, having the minimum number of six (6) riders, that they may become tired and have to pit for themselves but they were amazing and kept going.  The seniors helped by pitting for the junior team as well as the senior team. Pitting is helping stop the bike, holding it still whilst the riding gets out, helping the ridier out, removing the riders drink bottle, getting a fresh drink bottle for the new rider, doing up the 6 point safety harness for the new rider, holding the lid up, clicking it into place for the new riding, wiping screens clean when foggy, clicking the lid into place and pushing them off. It is hard work.

One really amazing moment during the late hours night, which really made our the staff member’s night, was when the boys (girls were sleeping we think) were leaning against the orange barriers, waiting for the bikes to come past again so they could bang on the barriers and cheer them on. A boppy song came on. I noted a foot started to twitch, then I saw another tapped up and down, a leg of another lad wobbled side to side, another of the boys stood up and started to jump on the spot and then they all just started to dance. It was such a great moment full of joy, no inhibitions, so relaxed with each other and just loving what they were doing. It made our hearts sing and eyes sting. It made all the hard work to get there so worth it.  I wish every parent could have seen that moment in time. They then peeled off the barrier, crossed over the pit lane and started free dancing on the turf matting. It was such a great moment.

The results are the results.  Honestly, it’s not what we were there for.  It’s for the moments like this, it’s for the connections we see between the students. The students we often see join this program may not have great social skills or many friends but make great social connections in this program.  It’s for outcomes in ex-students like Jonno who joins us every year, he takes times off work, gets his WWCC so he is able to be a part of helping us with this program and quoted this year saying, “I would never have finished school if it hadn’t have been for EB”.

The results:

Both The Rodent (junior team) and The High Flyer (senior team) were entered into the Open Section this year. This was because we did not meet the criteria for other sections where you needed to have a balance of 4 females and 4 males per team. Being in the open section does mean that traditionally you are competing against generally 18 year all male teams. There were 27 teams entered into this category this year.

I’d like to thank our students who broomed, cleaned, washed, prepared, danced, smiled, pedalled and sweated so hard; the hard working helpers we couldn’t do without – Daniel and Jonno; the relentless staff on camp – Leah-anne Reid and John Francis; our ever smiling office staff: Julie Pickering, Lesley Thorpe, Jenny Wood and Principal staff - Michele Kennedy (AP) and Stephan Fields and to my mentor Kym Raneberg.

If you have a child that you think would like to be involved in 2025, send them up to Sheehan Wing, Floor 2, Staffroom 2.1, to see Yvonne Benson or Leah-anne Reid. If you would like to sponsor the team or know a business, please send us an email ballarat.hs@education.vic.gov.au . 

Yvonne Benson

Energy Breakthrough