Celebrating Star’s Olympians

Star celebrates its 2016 Olympians…

Ellia Green on the front cover of the Good Weekend.

RUGBY SEVENS IN RIO … Ellia Green (2010) was featured in The Age’s Good Weekend magazine in April*. She will be competing in the Olympic Games in Rio in the Australian women’s rugby sevens team, currently ranked No. 1 in the world. This is the first time that rugby sevens will feature in the Olympics and the Australian women’s team is the gold medal favourite.

23-year-old Ellia was born in Fiji, lived there with her adoptive parents until she was five. Her father died when she was very young. Ellia and her Melbourne-based mother, Yolanta Green, are very close. Ellia competed in track events before playing rugby sevens for the first time four years ago, having represented Australia at the World Junior Athletic Championships. She turned up at rugby sevens talent search camp in Melbourne in 2012 by accident: she had driven her cousin there and was persuaded to try out, even though she didn’t have her own boots! Many of the players have moved to Sydney and given up careers to focus on rugby. Ellia was a nurse in Melbourne and enjoyed caring for the elderly but felt drained having to train every day after work. Teachers are Star remember Ellia as playing all her sport with passion: “she was a real presence around the College, and especially at the various sports carnivals!” We will follow her team’s performance in August with great interest.

*Excerpts in this report have been taken from 9 April 2016 edition of the Good Weekend: How our women’s rugby team will win Olympic Gold by Ceridwen Dovey

SPEED SKATING IN LILLEHAMMER …

The College community is very proud of current Year 12 student, Julia Moore, who represented Australia in short-track speed skating at the second Winter Youth Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway in February 2016. One of only seventeen athletes from Australia, Julia was chosen to speak at the Opening Ceremony. She improved on her Personal Best by six seconds in her 1000 metre race and raced in the 500 metre event, lowering her time by 1.5 seconds, placing 12th overall. Her team of four skaters won the silver medal in the Mixed Nation 3000 metre relay: I was the only Australian skater who qualified for the Youth Olympics. This made it extra daunting at the beginning, during training sessions with other countries. When Julia was seven years of age, she went to a public session at the ice rink and loved it: I did figure skating for a few years before discovering speed skating and never looked back. In preparing for the Youth Olympics, Julia trained five days a week over the summer holidays: My family has always been extremely supportive. Mum drives me to all my 6.00am training sessions. My family came to the Games to watch me compete: it was great hearing Aussie accents in the crowd cheering for me.

L-R: Ane By (Norway), Julia Moore (Australia) & Shione (Japan)

Star has strongly supported Julia: Friends and teachers were super excited about me qualifying. I got such a warm welcome upon my return. The teachers have been very understanding and helpful when it comes to all the classes I missed.