Keeping an eye on the ball Break a leg

from Wairarapa Midweek Wed 8th March

Remember when

Murry discloses that Sir Bob, current patron of Golf New Zealand, was also “patron of the AMP New Zealand Golf Foundation, donating one per cent of his US Senior Tour earnings until retiring in the 90s.”

The ÿ rst golf tournament at WaiCol took place in 1935 and a school golf club was formed in 1937. Teacher Mr Drew organised a school golf championship when Sir Bob was a student. A later regional golf season (1986) was particularly successful when the college retained the cup for inter-collegiate golf and won the Wellington regional ÿ nal of the National Provident inter-collegiate golf competition.

Made an honorary prefect when visiting WaiCol back in 1969, Sir Bob will be back for the centenary, teeing o° with Year-10 student Luke Lange: a distinguished old boy in the making.

Marilyn Bouzaid came to WaiCol in 1970 to teach for a term. She stayed for 40 years. Marilyn was a French teacher, became Head of Department for languages, and established and ran the school’s drama department. Plays had been put on in earlier years, but without the support of a formal department.

Between 1971 and 2010, Marilyn directed 36 major musicals. In 1997, she received a Queens Service Medal (QSM). Marilyn is back at Wairarapa College during centenary weekend as MC at the 1920s Gala. She’ll bring back memories and raise a few laughs.

“I usually inserted myself into the last night of every show,” she recalls with a grin. “It was our 1986 production of Half a Sixpence I was up there dancing the Cancan when I felt something tear in my leg – I’d broken my Achilles tendon.” She had a little old Ford Anglia in those days and, in 2009, they drove her car onto the stage in Grease. And there was the time that principal George Sutherland, who came to all the shows, thought the hall was on ÿ re: “we were just using dry ice”.

Originally, drama classes took place in an old prefab. “I think the principal got sick of the noise we made, and so a purposebuilt drama department was erected.”

In the 1980s, Marilyn initiated WaiCol’s involvement in theatre sports (improvisation on stage). In 1991, New Zealand’s Shakespeare Globe Centre was established, and Marilyn led WaiCol students to participate in its annual Shakespeare Festival. Stage Challenge started up in 1993, incorporating dance, drama, and design within eight-minute performances. Marilyn’s students rose to the challenge. “One year, we were at the Opera House in Wellington, and used skateboards in our performance. We wiped out the lighting at the front of the stage.” Once NCEA was introduced, they put on class plays as well as school productions. Marilyn remembers Jason Kerehi, now on the Board of Trustees, acting in South Paciÿ c Ross Taylor (later, captain of New Zealand’s cricket team) was “a very good actor”. “Three boys from one family did drama with me – all of them got hung, cruciÿ ed or killed in some way in the shows.”