Energetic kids add to carnival flavour
LITTLE Brock could’ve gone to the movies. He could’ve gone shopping.
Little Brock couldn’t think of anything worse.
“We head to the track to watch the racing and his mum and sister do their thing,” Dave Huggins said with a pride familiar to any motorsport-loving father who has ever whacked a set of earmuffs on his five-year-old boy and said “GC600, here we come”.
“This is our boy thing. He loves doing stuff with me and I’m going to grab the chance while he still does.
“I’m actually hoping he’ll grow up and be pushing me around here when I’m too old to walk around on my own.”
Little Brock is from the Sunny Coast but for the next week he’s calling the Gold Coast home. More importantly, for a few hours yesterday he was one of the thousands of youngsters who had turned the opening day of the GC600 carnival into a virtual kids club.
About 4000 schoolchildren alone poured through the gates as part of the Students on Track program, an initiative that reaffirms the old-age adage that your school days are the best days of your life.
“This is an educational visit,” said Centaur Primary School teacher Liz Goddem, who had made the trek north from Banora Point with two excitable Year 6 classes.
“It’s free and (Supercars) even puts together a teachers program and student handbooks. We’ve been studying the science of forces that have to do with gravity, as well as acceleration and speed.
“Then we’ll go back to school and look at all the things we’ve seen here that make an event like this work.”
Not far away the crew from Upper Coomera State College was using its educational visit to test the forces of gravity on the Meltdown, a Wipeout-style game where the aim is to avoid getting clobbered by a rotating arm.
“I’d prefer to watch the cars but you’ve got to keep them happy,” teacher Mike Brightwell smiled of the fun being had by his sporting excellence students.
“It’s great bringing them here though as it shows them that sport doesn’t just revolve around netball and touch footy. It’s also great there is a female driver in Supercars because it’s something the girls can aspire to.”
Asked what he had enjoyed most about his V8s experience, Year 5 pupil Kartel Brown showed he was taking interest in more than just the females driving the cars.
“Meeting the cars,” he said with a cheeky grin before his teacher interpreted.
“Um, ‘the cars’ is code for, yeah, you know,” smiled Mr Brightwell. And right on cue a posse of Miss Supercars entrants strolled on by.
Educational indeed.