By Taylah Eastwell
A Beaconhills College Year 12 student has spent every spare moment and lunchtime turning her love for baseball into a machine that she hopes will help her with her training.
The only girl in the Systems Engineering class, Lily Pedder has always been fascinated by mechanics and got her inspiration from her experience training for the National Baseball Championships in Canberra earlier this year.
Lily’s love for baseball kickstarted after she followed in her father’s footsteps by joining a baseball club in Dandenong. From there, Lily’s abilities on the field saw her playing in Nationals and in her current position with a Berwick women’s team.
“For nationals training we were training with a pitching machine. It was always a very accurate ball and allowed us to practice really specific hits in the strike zone. We could just hit and hit and hit and that is what I hope to get out of this,” Lily said.
Lily’s design works by two spinning wheels running parallel to each other pushing the baseball out towards the batter. Despite spending $600 of her own money on the project, Lily is pleased this is only a fraction of the cost of other machines currently on the market.
“I hope to make it useful for ground balls so you can practice your fielding as well as fly balls,” Lily added.
Lily and her teachers are hopeful her design will be included in the VCE Seasons of Excellence Top Designs, a five-month annual festival showcasing the outstanding work of secondary students from Victorian schools. Beaconhills has had the work of systems engineering students included in Top Designs on six previous occasions.
Beaconhills Systems Engineering teacher Peter Van Waart said that while systems engineering is perceived as a boys subject, girls tend to achieve high marks in it as well, and he hopes more girls will enrol in the class in the future.
