Vex Robotics World Champions Again!!
April 20 2015
| Lynfield College students are once again the World Champions at the Vex Robotics World Championships in Louisville, Kentucky. They successfully defended the High School World Champion title they won at last year’s championship in Los Angeles by winning the finals this morning (NZ time) in a tightly fought best of three games. They also won the Science Division top award. They competed against around 450 high school teams from 28 other countries. Steven Barker's and Conor Thomas's teams were in different divisions. Unfortunately Conor's team didn't get the best alliance partners and was not selected by one of the top teams to continue into the division finals . |
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Steven's team had a great run in the division play offs and was ranked 3rd going into the division finals. As captain Steven got to choose his alliance partners for the finals.
The High School grand finals were a real trial with all rounds going to 3 games and all games played only being won or lost by a few points. The Lynfield College team led by Steven Barker was the eventual winner of the World Championship High School Title. Steven also came 3rd in the world for the High School driver skills competition.
All the students worked really hard throughout the competition. Their team work was outstanding and it was fantastic to see Conor's team jump straight in to help Steve's team once they had been knocked out.
VEX is the biggest and fastest- growing classroom based robotics competition in the World and we are at the top of it. More than 33 countries and 11,000 teams compete worldwide to attend the World Championships and only 450 make it to the High School Championships. To win is a magnificent effort that cannot be overstated. There is intense competition in the division rounds with ten separate games. To then win both their division finals and the semifinals in the same day before taking out the world Championship finals is a great achievement.
 All participating students are to be congratulated for their dedication, hard work and team efforts leading up to and during this competition. These photos were taken in Louisville during the world championships. |
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High Energy Physics
Many students are deciding on their future careers which await them after their time at Lynfield College. This year one focus for the Academic Council is to provide a year round programme of guest speakers to give students careers guidance and an insight into their chosen fields of study.
The programme started this term with a visit by Dr David Krofcheck, a physicist who met Pyong and Raynil, two of our Academic Captains, at the Young Physicists' Competition. He shared an insight into some of his work with experimental and theoretical physics and this inspired the physics and science students who attended.
Further into the guest speaker programme, Academic Captains Raynil, Sachi, Pyong and Meryl will be organizing more meetings with inspirational speakers from finance, bio-medical science, humanities and many other areas which students are interested in.
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Gifted and Talented Student Academy Conference
17 students, accompanied by the college's GATE Coordinators Mr Halligan & Miss Reed, attended this year's Gifted and Talented Student Academy Conference recently at St Cuthbert's College.
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The conference was themed 'All Great Empires Fall' - this was a world class 'thinking day' at which students engaged with a wide range of topics. There were a number of university style lectures aiming to broaden students' knowledge, engage their critical abilities and upgrade their thinking tools. The day finished with an opportunity for students to contribute to a lively debate..that "This house believes that without science civilisation would disintegrate into barbarism" More information is available here; http://www.academyconferences.com/index.php/gifted-and-talented-students/au-nz-programme |