Port Macquarie school teams achieve historic result at robotics competition

Hastings Secondary College team Hastings Heroes formed an alliance with Iona Fusion from St Columba Anglican School and another school from Victoria.

They competed together in the finals of the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) Southern Cross Regional Championships.

The event was in Sydney over the weekend of March 11-12.

The team was made up of 50 high school students who spent two months designing, prototyping and manufacturing their robot.

They were defeated by another team made up of students from Barker College and Pymble Ladies College.

Over 38 teams from across Australia and the Asia-Pacific competed in the event.

Hastings Secondary College Westport Campus Year 12 student Jorja Schofield was captain of the Hastings Heroes and said she is proud of her team.

She said it's the highest ranking they've been able to achieve at the competition.

Jorja has been competing in robotics since Year 7. She was named as the Young Leader for 2023 at the Port Macquarie-Hastings Australia Day Awards for her promotion of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths).

She's hoping to study biomedical science or biomedical engineering at university once she graduates.

Jorja said the robot has to carry out particular tasks over two and a half minutes during the game.

It's played across an area which is the size of a basketball court.

Jorja said it was a challenge to practice with limited space in their classroom at school.

However, she said she was proud of the drivers who she coached through their training and their hard work has paid off.

Hastings Heroes also received the Autonomous Award for their robot design, and Iona Fusion received the Innovation in Control Award for theirs.

The First Robotics Competition is an international STEM robotics competition that promotes student growth in robotics, coding and mechatronics.

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