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Head of Sport
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From the Head of Sport
After Covid-19 disrupted Redeemer’s school year in 2020, the beginning of 2021 looked brighter and more promising. The College’s Sport Department saw a number of changes taking place at both a program level and also staffing level. We farewelled Maddy Willey (Sport Co-ordinator) and Michael Conlon (Head of Sport), and welcomed back Mikhaela Donnelly (Deputy Head of Sport) from maternity leave, while also introducing a new Head of Sport to the Redeemer community!
Australian Rules football (aka Aussie Rules or AFL) was introduced as a Greater Brisbane Conference (GBC) school sport in both primary and secondary school competitions, Indoor Cricket was introduced to our primary students as a GBC sport and our Senior School cricketers transitioned from playing outdoor cricket to indoor cricket.
Term 1 saw our Junior School sport program transition from the previous JTAS competition to join our Senior School students in the GBC competition, and we started the year with our GBC Primary (AFL and Indoor Cricket) and GBC Senior Sport (Boys AFL and Volleyball, and Girls AFL and Basketball). Our Senior School students in the Junior Girls AFL competition achieved immediate success, going through their season undefeated and claimed the first ever GBC AFL premiership!
Term 2 kicked off with Phil Tonkin, joining our existing College Sport Co-ordinators. We saw a large number of Junior School students sign up for GBC Netball and Touch Football, while our Senior School students were out in force for GBC Girls Football and Netball, and Boys Indoor Cricket and Touch Football. Congratulations to our Senior GBC Boys Junior, Intermediate and Senior Indoor Cricket teams who won all three finals to make it a premiership clean sweep!
Our Inter-House Carnivals for Swimming, Cross Country and Athletics were enthusiastically attended, with the weather unfortunately conspiring against us and forcing the cancellation of the track events for the Senior School Athletics Carnival not once, but twice! During these carnivals we witnessed Yasmine De Vere (Year 12) break three Redeemer swimming records! Matisse Conlon (Year 9), Scarlet Lacey (Year 10) and our 2021 Sport Captain, Ava Walker (Year 12) all broke records in their respective Shot-Put events at the Senior School Athletics Carnival, plus Ava also broke the Discuss record by just under 5 metres!
As a result of some great individual student performances at the College’s sporting carnivals, we had a strong contingent of students from both the Junior and Senior School, represent the College at Southern Lutheran Association of Primary School (SLAPS, 9-12 year olds), the Logan District School Sport and Met East Regional School Sport (10-19 year olds), and finally, the GBC Sport Carnivals (Years 3-12 students).
A special mention and congratulations to footballer (soccer) Alexa Smith (Year 6), cricketer Nicholas Strong (Year 12), and swimmers Aidan Shen (Year 4), Luke Beeley (Year 9), Siddhant Sachdeva (Year 9), Jackson Clarke (Year 12) and Yasmine De Vere (Year 12) for participating strongly at Queensland School Sport State Championships this year.
Our SELECT Sport programs have also grown in 2021 with a number of students trialling for, and being selected in Football (soccer), Netball and Volleyball squads. SELECT Sport programs run 12 months of the year focusing on developing the student’s sporting skills, athletic ability and game knowledge. Our netballers have participated in the Underwood Park Netball Association for the first time as a Redeemer team and we continue to look for external highlevel sporting competitions for our SELECT Sport squads to compete in.
GBC Sport in Term 3 started very positively with high numbers of student nominations in both Junior and Senior School, resulting in 15 Junior School teams across Basketball and Football (Soccer) and just under 20 Senior School teams covering Girls Volleyball and Touch Football, and Boys Football (Soccer) and Basketball.
Unfortunately, our second Covid-19 lockdown and subsequent sporting restrictions brought our season to a halt along with forcing the cancellation of the Logan District, Met East and Queensland State Athletics Carnivals for 2021.
I would like to take this opportunity to formally and heartedly thank everyone at Redeemer for welcoming me into the College community. Thanks to the fantastic support and efforts of our sport staff and coaches, I would hope that we have been able to provide the students with a positive and enjoyable Sport program throughout the year.
Finally, my sincere thanks and gratitude to Danielle Hinton, Mikaela DiSavia, Maddy Willey, Phil Tonkin (Sport Co-ordinators), Angie Lindsay (Sport Administration Officer) and Mikhaela Donnelly (Deputy Head of Sport) who make up the Redeemer Sport Department, along with Geoff Logan (Junior School HPE) and Julie Logan (Head of Senior HPE) who have openly shared their knowledge and experiences with me this year.
I thoroughly believe Sport at Redeemer is in good hands, with some exciting things in store for our Junior and Senior School students in the near future.
