General News
26 November, 2024
EB turns school rivalries into friendships
While Energy Breakthrough (EB) continues to attract new schools to tackle the sustainable challenge, some schools are willing to travel 585 kilometers to grab a piece of the action.
Located just five kilometres out of Adelaide’s CBD, Pembroke School’s Human Powered Vehicle (HPV) program has been part of the school’s fabric since 1985.
Consistently successful in the South Australian and national series and commonly seen at EB, teacher and HPV coordinator Jason Lentakis said the program is a unique opportunity for students to develop life skills.
“Most of the schools here do it because we realise it’s more than just a sport, it’s something that gives these kids a sense of belonging and pushes them beyond what they thought they were capable of,” he said.
“One of the really important things for us is we run a mentoring program where our senior students guide our younger students coming into the program and the senior kids have so much to offer.
“We also have old scholars who come back and help out — we currently have one girl who raced in Paris for the Olympics in the velodrome so she’s pretty inspira-tional for the kids as someone who went from the pedal program to an Olympian.”
The school is one of five from interstate that participated in 2024’s EB, sending eight male students to compete in the HPV secondary open class.
Mr Lentakis said EB’s heavy focus on sustainable education was a nice change of pace for students.
“This event for us is a reward for the ones that have put in a lot of effort throughout the year not just in their fitness, but in regards to prepping bikes for races and doing a lot of mentoring,” he said.
“EB is cool for us to come over to because it has a different focus in regards to the educational aspect and I really value that as a teacher.
“In South Australia, we lost the design, construction and presen-tation component so our kids have had to prep for that for this event.
“The kids really enjoyed that, there was a lot of discussion on the bus over about that and how they were going to put the final touches on their presentation.”
While EB has become a tradition for Pembroke, fellow Adelaide school Norwood International started to forge their own history competing in their first EB under the Norwood International name.
The two schools have often found themselves in a “pretty friendly ... but occasionally intense rivalry” across the HPV South Australian series, which Pembroke narrowly took out this year.
Despite the constant competition between the teams, the schools decided to share the same pit space and assist each other with communal tools and maintenance assistance.
Norwood International High School teacher Ben O’Connell said the week’s partnership has built “a magical amount of comradery” between the two schools.
“To get the kids together teaches them how to have those well-structured friendly relationships while being competitors at the same time,” he said.
“The group that we have got here is nearly all Year 12’s, so they’ve had a pretty rough five years with COVID and things like that, so it was a bit of a way to finish their school experience.
“For us, it hasn’t just been a year experience, it has been a five-year experience, and the kids can look back at that journey and see what they got out of it and how they have grown as people.
“As a school community, we strive not only for success academically, but for students to have every opportunity to experience that in lots of different realms.”
Norwood International wasn’t the only school experiencing its maiden voyage into EB last week as they were joined by Trinity Lutheran College in Mildura and Lucas Primary School.
Despite only being founded in 2020, Lucas Primary School teacher Nick Compston said the school has built a strong community thanks to events like EB.
“I participated with other schools that I worked at for a couple of years and the kids loved to be a part of the event,” he said.
“It’s been a long road — they have been working really hard but they are proud of themselves, we are proud of them and they were just really eager to get on the track.
“The legacy of this first year that we are leaving for the kids coming up means a lot to us.
“We are setting the benchmark and we’ll be trying to improve ourselves every year.”