The school’s eight-person Thunder team, comprising students from grades four to six, won the 14-hour endurance trial in their small primary school category, and placed third overall out of 96 schools from across the state.

Their second team Lightning, made up mainly of grade four students, came a hard-earned 12^th in the event at Maryborough last weekend. 

Principal Darlene Cameron said the endurance race involved eight hours of driving in the human powered carts on Friday, and six hours on Saturday, with regular driver changes needed to beat the heat.

Students had to give a presentation about their cars and pass a scrutineering test just to make it to the starting grid.

​”Typically, each rider completed around 35 minutes in the car before changing over. Normally in cooler conditions they go for about an hour but with the weather we looked after their safety,” Ms Cameron said.

The Thunder team had already tasted victory, winning an endurance race at Mt Gambier earlier in the year.

“It’s a huge undertaking to be part of this competition. It’s been our biggest year because we made the decision at the beginning of the year to compete in Mt Gambier, and after that we knew we had a really competitive team we knew we could potentially take all the way.

“We pretty much started from term one with training for Maryborough including rehearsal of presentation content, knowledge, science and innovation learning that they must know and do, and then training every day at recess and lunchtime on rotation.”

Ms Cameron said the two teams had a positive impact on each other and built strong bonds of teamwork and friendship, as well as other health benefits.

“They’ve all stayed incredibly fit for the training, their diets are great, their exercise levels are really high which we know has an impact on mental health and so many other positives flow from there.”