TRINITY College students have battled it out on the robotics field to come away with several wins at last Friday’s state competitions.

Students across four campuses joined competitors from other schools from around the state in the RoboCup Junior Australia state competition, hosted by St Peters College Junior School.

Among those to walk away with a trophy were Trinity Blakeview students Zac Fleetwood and Abhishek Cherayaramal, who together won in the Primary Rescue division – one of the most competitive and hardest divisions to win.

Trinity College Blakeview Junior School robotics co-ordinator Simon Coad said the boys’ efforts were “truly amazing” on the day.

“It was their third year competing, so just by having that extra experience and really persisting and learning from previous competitions (helped),” he said.

“A lot of our winners at Blakeview have done it for a number of years or have been coached by older students who have come back to help.

“We had an internal comp at the end of term three so that also gave an advantage for a lot of the kids to have that competition against each other and then go back and learn what worked, what didn’t.”

Other Trinity students to win big on Friday included Jessica Bryant and Lily McKinlay who were awarded first place in the OnStage Experienced competition, which sees robots dressed up and perform to music.

The Sumo competition, which sees robots have to push or flip competitors out of a ring, saw Trinity teams place first across both divisions.

Sumo Open was won by Trinity Blakeview’s Kayden Collins and Marcus Lynn, with Blakeview’s Jaxon Ashford and Mason Lowe placing second.

In the Sumo standard, which features smaller, lighter robots, state winners were Gawler River School students and brothers Eddie and Andy Trinh.

Second place in the Sumo standard went to Rainn Shi and Kaitlyn Winchester from North campus and third to Tess Hanly and Vaughn Brookes of Blakeview campus.

Mr Coad said this year was the first time the college had teams entered from across all its campuses, to join seasoned champs from Trinity Blakeview.

Trinity Blakeview has been competing in RoboCup Junior for 12 years, and in that time has won 24 state titles and numerous placings at a national level.

Mr Coad said students’ involvement in the robotics program had numerous benefits.

“There is programming, coding, building, and you’ve got the design aspect,” he said.

“But it is also about team work and about perseverance – so if things start going wrong, how do we fix this.

“…The students I work with, even though some kids are in different divisions or comps, they still help each other out, and you’ve got older kids helping younger ones.”

This year’s national competition was cancelled in relation to COVID-19 but is planned to be held in Adelaide in 2021.