Rival schools team up for international competition

Dozens of Grade 12 students from two Mount Pearl schools will be competing in an international robot design competition in Houston that's so important, some of them will miss their prom. 

Mount Pearl Senior High School won the regional competition earlier this month, and O'Donel High School placed second. Both will represent the province at the Marine Advanced Technology Education (M.A.T.E.) competition at the NASA Johnson Space Center's Neutral Buoyancy Lab.    

The teams designed and built remotely operated vehicles (ROV) to perform a series of skill-testing missions.

The underwater robots will observe the environment and take temperatures in a simulation of Jupiter's moon, Europa.

The students will be up against teams from all over the world.

"If you do the work, there's nothing to be nervous about," said Khafre Pike in an interview with the St. John's Morning Show.

"We've certainly put in a lot of hours on the ROV and all the technical documents so I think we're sitting pretty good… I'm not too nervous."

Dates clash with grad ceremonies

Pike, and the rest of the Mount Pearl Senior High team, will have to make a sacrifice to attend the event. The competition is scheduled for the same date as their graduation ceremony, but Sean Purchase said skipping prom to visit NASA is a no-brainer. 

"It's a once in a lifetime experience," he said. "The Neutral Buoyancy Lab in NASA, this is where they train all their astronauts and test all of their equipment. I've been dreaming about this since I started watching the Discovery Channel at ten or 11 years old."

Purchase says the two Mount Pearl schools have set aside a long-standing rivalry that exists during the regional competition. They have joined forces.

"But now we're both kind of trying to get to the same goal," Purchase said.

"We're trying to go to Texas together and represent the country, the province and even Mount Pearl."

The M.A.T.E. competition is scheduled for June 23-25.