Sport

Director of School SPORT

Paul Braddock

The year started off like any other with the National Secondary Schools Beach Volleyball Championship being held over at Mount Maunganui Main beach the weekend before school commenced for the 2020 year. We had 30 teams competing at this event which is an awesome amount considering we were not back at school yet. Larissa Meads and Rose Akkerman who are in year 13 and have partnered for beach most of their time at Secondary School won the senior girls final and became the National Secondary Schools Champions. What a way to start the year! Rose also was selected into the New Zealand u19 Beach Volleyball team.

We then got into the school year and sports started straight away. The BOP Secondary School Triathlon was the first event and we had Olivia Cummings continue her amazing record with the event winning the u19 girls race, may I add she beat all of the u19 boys as well, winning her 5th title at the Bay of Plenty event.

The BOP Secondary Schools Tennis Championships was next up and we had some superstar seniors that competed very well throughout the day in the stunning summer heat. Hannah Walpole made the final and in a close battle finished as the senior girls division one champion for 2020. Lisa Evans and Emily Mahon competed in the division one senior girls doubles, taking on five other teams and winning.

Term one Summer sports were underway and he had many teams training hard for their Summer Tournaments at the end of March. Our Rowers were fortunate enough to be able to compete at the North Island Secondary Schools regatta where they all had some outstanding individual results with some students claiming medals in an A final. Emma Averill finished 2nd u16 Single, Chloe Wright and Jenna Brangwynne 2nd u15 double and Emma Averill and Rhianna Loughnan 3rd u17 double.

Our Volleyball teams were also fortunate in that they managed to finish off their Bay of Plenty Secondary Schools Championships. The standard of the top 4 teams in both the boys and girls tournament this season was very high with some very close games. Our senior A girls went down to Trident High School in the final finishing 2nd and the boys missed out narrowly on the final and finished 4th overall.

Unfortunately we were then hit with the Corona Virus in New Zealand and put into level 4 lockdown which meant that Summer Tournament week was cancelled, school was out and no sports were being played. As a result of COVID-19 and along with Summer Tournament week, we had 17 events cancelled out of our secondary schools sporting calendar. This impacted a lot of the BOP Secondary Schools events as term one and two are very busy terms for sports events.

Our winter Sports were put on hold and we had no idea if there was going to be a winter sports season or not.

Once we were back to school in a COVID-19 Alert level 2 we were still awaiting to see if any sports were going to go ahead.

It was a bright day when New Zealand moved into COVID-19 alert Level 1 and we were able to get back into sport. This was towards the end of term 2, all winter teams were training and some playing and we managed to fit in a few sporting events. Unfortunately during the lockdown, all of the National Secondary Schools winter tournament were cancelled for the 2020 year. Hockey decided to still run regional tournaments and a couple of other sports tried to organise games within regions as well.

Our Junior and Senior Badminton teams competed at the Western BOP Badminton championships, competing for a spot in the finals for each grade. Of the 12 teams we had competing, 10 made the finals, 6 senior teams and 4 junior teams. Our Junior girls played incredibly well at the finals and went on to win division one.

In Table Tennis we had 12 students compete within the two events with Alex Freeman finishing 2nd in Senior Boys and Alex and his partner Angus Raeburn finishing 3rd in the doubles event. We then had the teams event and Alex Freeman, Moses Caldwell and Angus Raeburn finished 2nd in the senior boys teams event.

The last North Island event that was held was the Secondary Schools Duathlon in Pukekohe in which Alex Rawlinson finished 2nd in the u14 girls.

We have been very fortunate that all of our winter sports have managed to make it most of the way through the season and are continuing to play in level two at the moment.

It will be interesting to see what term 4 brings.