VCAL: Human Powered Vehicle Competition

It was an absolutely amazing experience for 9 of our Year 11 VCAL students to head to Maryborough to compete in a Human Powered Vehicle competition recently. The students had organised everything including making the vehicle race ready, the food menu, organising activities, packing lists and training for the event. 

Early Thursday, after we unloaded all of our gear and set up our tents, we were straight off to the scrutineering of the vehicle and a discussion about the build and components of the vehicle. 

After we were informed that some work needed to be done we got straight to it preparing the vehicle for second round of scrutineering. We then had to rush to get to our presentation that we needed to make to the judges about our training and journey to be there along with ideas for more sustainable vehicles, risk management and the theme of our team. We had a team manager meeting about the event, we walked the track that we would be racing in preparation for the practice run on Friday morning and then finally got to bed.

Friday morning was an early start with us being on track at 7:15am. We noticed throughout our practice that our pit changes took way too long in comparison to other teams so we practiced pit stop procedures for nearly 45 minutes to make our team more competitive. 

We then had our triathlon events begin. Starting with an obstacle course that focussed on precision through several obstacles. There were two tight hairpin turns that our vehicle just made it around, a ramp, rumple strips, a minefield, a see-saw and a criss-cross ramp to navigate changing riders every lap. 

Then there was a team time trial where there was a shorter circuit that each rider completed changing riders every lap. For both of these elements of the event, I can proudly say that we won our heat both times. We had a relaxing night going to the movies and reflecting on the experience so far.

Saturday was the day for the big race, an 8 hour event to race against the other teams and we started well, very well. We were sitting in second spot in our division and third overall for the first couple of hours and travelling nearly 90 Kms in the first 3 hours we were in a good position. Then it happened, the rain was coming, the lightning, the thunder. Our event was called off after 3 hours, leaving us 5 hours short of the original planned race and we had finished second in our division. Apparently the “Pokemon gotta catch them all” vehicle had actually caught them all and passed them all and lapped them all a few times over.

Our students engaged with the other teams so well and were the fan favourites with many teams giving us our trademarked viper signal as they saw us! We definitely made an impact with our encouragement and kindness towards the other competitors.

There were many elements to this competition that contributed to our end score and it was a tight battle between the “Gotta Catch Them All Pokemon” team, the “Crazy Chickens" team and our BHCS “Vipers” team. 

It was such a fun experience and the team community was one of the best I have ever experienced at a school event.

Our team did an amazing job being our first time at this event, we really did not know exactly what we were in for but despite the challenges our team represented our school amazingly! Well done guys, up the vipers!