After a disrupted Term 1 of Volleyball in 2022, due to Covid, the Senior Girls team set their sights on heading to the Australian Schools' Cup in the Gold Coast (the equivalent of our National Secondary Schools' Champs in Australia), in December 2022.

This tournament is host to 400 teams from across Australia and a few like us from New Zealand.

The tournament is like playing a national final in New Zealand every game, as the quality of the competition is so high.

We attended with the goal of competing as hard as we could and, if the results followed, it would be a bonus! We won every game we played, only dropping 2 sets all tournament, one of which was in the final vs Brighton. 

Burnside has never won this tournament and became only the 2nd NZ school ever to do this in the Open Honours grade (top division). The team we played in the final had four Australian U19 representatives. 

The team was led beautifully by Rosa Vesty, with the help of Taylah Holdem and Cathy Porter, who were ever-present with their experience and leadership. The three of them all received full scholarships to the United States of America:

Cathy Porter - NJCAA - Hillsborough Community College

Rosa Vesty - NCAA Big 10 - Iowa University

Taylah Holdem - NCAA Big 10 - Michigan State University

Special thanks to Theresa Smith, team manager, for all her organisational skills in getting us to Australia, and managing us over there!

Sam Ryburn (Coach)