We kicked 2023 off with Mainland Champs (South Islands) which was the first of our three tournaments of the year.

We started the tournament off well with four wins and one close five set loss to Waimea in the pool stages, which saw us come second in our pool, facing up against Riccarton in the semi-finals. Unfortunately we had a 3-1 loss to Riccarton which meant we were playing for 3rd/4th against Kings High School. A nail-biting game this was as we came back from 14-11 down in the fifth set to end up winning, and placing 3rd at Mainland Champs, a good start to the season.

Our second tournament of the year was Canterbury Champs, and although this is a smaller tournament than Mainland Champs, it is more important as it determines the seedings for Nationals. Once again we had a very strong start to the tournament, only losing one game to Middleton Grange in five sets during pool play. Even though we lost a game, the other results in our pool still meant we qualified first from our pool giving us a semi-final against TKKM O Te Whanau Tahi. A 3-0 win in our semi-final meant we had Riccarton yet again in a knock-out game. This time wasn’t any better as we ended up losing 3-0, a disappointing finish to the tournament, but still a success. Also congratulations to Ari Leckie, Jova Waqa, and Thomas Vesty for being named in the Boys Tournament team.

The last and most important tournament for the year was National Champs in Palmerston North. Losing our first game of pool play to Otumoetai in five sets made the task of making the Top 16 very hard, we needed to win our next two games to make it. With the top seed of our pool, Mt Maunganui College, still to play, the team needed to play well to overcome this. After losing the first two sets we needed to pull off a miracle to go through, which is exactly what we did after completing a reverse sweep and winning in a thrilling five setter! We then made light work of our closing pool game against Naenae College winning 3-0, the team now was playing better than ever. This meant it was the first time the Burnside High School Boys team had ever made Top 16 at Nationals.

We then had a crossover pool with Tauranga Boys, Auckland Grammar, and of course Riccarton. Although it was one of the best games of our tournament, we lost to Tauranga Boys, then we quickly bounced back taking down Auckland Grammar 3-1, and Riccarton was left to play. Whoever won out of Riccarton and us made it through to the quarter finals. After losing pretty badly to Riccarton at the Mainland and Canterbury Champs, the odds were stacked up against us. We had another hard-fought battle and we ended up completing our revenge story and winning 3-1, ultimately knocking them out of the tournament as well!

This put us through to a quarter final against Hillcrest High School, who were unbeaten. We unfortunately didn’t have our best game losing 3-1, however the team were ecstatic that we made Top 8 anyway, so we decided to have some fun the last two games switching up rotations, with our setter playing middle and our libero playing outside. We ended the tournament coming 6th place, which is the best Burnside Boys have ever done by a long shot. Also a huge congratulations to Jova Waqa for being named in the Boys Tournament Team.

Overall it was a very successful season for the team with a 2nd, 3rd, and 6th place across the tournaments. Also a very big thank you to coach, Ben Laing, and Manager, Ms Barker, for all their help throughout the season, the programme wouldn’t be nearly as successful without them.

Thomas Vesty