Mercy News

With another successful Athletics carnival come and gone, we would like to say well done to all students and thank you to all of our staff. What a beautiful day to spend outside enjoying the fresh air, sunshine and team spirit. The winning House on the day was MIDAS who add another trophy to their impressive list.

Monday 19 July, five Mercy College teams competed in the Interschool Cricket Competition at Harrup Park. There were four divisions and the Mercy College teams won them all to progress onto the next round, well done to all the players. Thanks to Mrs Rowena Bartlett, Mr Chris Dunn and Mrs Michelle Bettini for their hard work. Special thanks to our scorer Mrs Angela Beardmore.

Last weekend the Human Powered Vehicle team raced in the Central Highlands Pedal Prix 16 hour event. Mercy students combined with St Patrick's College students to create three new teams to race in Senior Boys, Senior Girls and Junior Mixed Categories. The race was held overnight, starting Saturday afternoon and ending at 8:00am on Sunday.

Our Senior Boys team managed 6th place in their category and 8th place overall. This was an amazing achievement considering the team lost over one and half hours due to mechanical issues. The senior team achieved a top track time of one minute and four seconds over the one kilometre track, equalling an average speed of just under 60km/hour and coming in only slightly behind the fastest laps performed at the event.

Our Mercy students picked up a trophy for best presented team. Some of the criteria for the trophy include, vehicles being well presented, pits are kept well and organised and the team's behaviour must be exemplary both on and off the track - basically showing our Mercy Values.

NAIDOC Week is an exciting time of the year where Mercy staff and students pay respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history and also acknowledge and celebrate the achievements made by Aboriginal and Torres Islander peoples.

NAIDOC 2021 theme this year was Heal Country. Healing Country means embracing First Nations cultural knowledge and understanding of Country as part of Australia’s national heritage.

This year our Indigenous committee students helped to organise cultural events for the school. Events included, guest Didgeridoo player Lyndon Francis from My105.9FM, a Staff NAIDOC High Tea, NAIDOC All school BBQ and the Teacher Vs Students touch football game.

The Pedal Prix teams raced at the Whitsunday STEM Challenge on Saturday 12 June with our Senior Mixed and Junior Mixed teams taking out their categories.

Our teams joined schools from Emerald, Townsville and Mackay this year making it a truly Central/North QLD event for the region. In all there were 18 teams competing for trophies with 13 of them local teams.

The race was a series of 30 minute mini races with a 10min Covid clean and driver change over between each race. The course was shortened to 470 meters this year with times around the quite technical track as low as 48 seconds per lap equating to an average speed of 35km/hr for the lap.

Aside from the great racing, the best compliment I had for our teams was - "we need to make our teams run as well as yours, they just do everything so well". They are a pleasure to work with and really show the best of Mercy College to their region.