UHC's Year 9 EPro8 team made the grand final after a strong performance in qualifying. Science teacher Starsha Wright explains what the competition is and how our students fared.

In the end of qualifying it was a race against the clock and some tough competition but our Year 10 team placed 9th, and the Year 9 team came 3rd, earning them a place in the Grand Finals the very next day.

The EPro8 Challengeis a national science and engineering competition where over 35,000 students from across New Zealand compete each year. This exciting event tests creativity, teamwork, and problem-solving under pressure.  

Our two teams were made of:

• Year 9 team - Marlon Diesch-Priest, Lachie Hollebone, Macheda Martin-Puna and Jamie McCarthy.

• Year 10 team - Logan Hartley, Reese Lingad and Finn Spharler.

The students had to design, build, programme, and test a project that meets a specific brief, with each completed stage earning points.

Both teams engineered a fully operational barrier arm that could magnetically detect a car (which they also built), activate warning lights, and raise/lower the barrier arm according to a sensor to let the car through.

The Grand Finals

At the finals, the top teams from each heat faced off in a new set of challenges,  all themed around movies. Our Year 9 team chose to recreate the Thunderbirds launch sequence. They built a platform that rose from the ground, launched the Thunderbirds 2 rocket, and retracted back down. After completing this ambitious task, they even managed to start a second challenge of building an Indiana Jones-inspired mine cart.

Despite not having practiced as a full team before the event, our students placed an incredible 9th overall in the grand final an achievement we are hugely proud of!

Congratulations to both teams for showing off some serious engineering talent and representing UHC. We hope to get more involved in EPro8 in the future.