Pupils at Appleton Academy, Wyke, have won a national challenge to design and plan a National Handball Centre for the 2012 London Olympics.

Pupils in the academy’s Science, Technology and Maths (STEM) Club were chosen out of 73 schools to be one of two teams to compete yesterday at Manchester Arena as part of the Big Bang Event.

The STEM club at Appleton Academy had 45 members. The successful team, from year nine, were commended for their work and leadership skills.

The team designed a stadium based on a chocolate orange, using scale diagrams to show the layout of the main arena. Working with a guest building surveyor and the technology department they prepared scale diagrams and models.

Academy principal Dwayne Saxton said: “I am overjoyed at the wonderful achievement of the young people representing Appleton Academy.

“Winning the STEM Challenge, a national competition, is the result of a great deal of hard work and commitment by our students, and the excitement and enjoyment of science created by their teachers and the STEM Club.”

The STEM Challenges are ten activities inspired by London 2012, with each one focusing on a different aspect of the preparations of the event itself.

They provide a contextual and cross-curricular approach to studying the STEM subjects at Key Stage Three.

Barbara Hey, advanced specialist teacher in science at the academy and STEM club co-ordinator, said: “It is fantastic that the hard work and skills of our pupils has been recognised nationally.

“This project has been completed in our after-school club – the pupils’ enthusiasm and willingness to invest their own time reflects the interest they have developed in their lessons.”

As part of the challenge the pupils organised experiments on types of flooring and helped the year seven club members complete experiments on both types of laminate flooring they had constructed, and on how balls behave on different surfaces around school.

Presenting their findings to the STEM judges, before yesterday’s final, David Mullen, of Astra-Zeneca in Macclesfield, and the director of Stemnet, Matthew Tosh, said they were “extremely impressed” by the design and the way the team worked.

For more information visit stemchallenges.net and thebigbangfair.co.uk.