This year Christchurch Girls’ High / Te Kura o Hine Waiora has had an extremely high level of involvement in both social and competitive touch. All teams played on Wednesday afternoons in Hagley Park against other schools. This year there was a total of 11 touch teams who played in the social grades.

In Term 1, two of these teams competed competitively and had coaches to help develop their skills. These teams were the Development A and B teams. One team was coached by Miss Williamson, who is a very talented touch player, and the other team by Jordan Swift and myself. We really wanted to develop touch this year at CGHS, so we focused on the younger players coming through to help enable us to have future success. Upskilling young players is important to help grow the foundations from which the super touch team stems from.

This proved very beneficial, as coming into Term 4, when we had our super touch trial, we had many new girls wanting to play competitively in our top team.

We have one super touch team, that was coached by the extremely knowledgeable and devoted Adrian Godinet. The super touch team was filled with many young players who were willing to learn and progress into skilled players. We competed in the South Island Touch tournament in Term 1, where we were not very successful. However, this tournament was great to get to know each other and teach the young girls new moves and important aspects within the game of touch. From this tournament, we also were offered a chance to attend Nationals on a wild card despite only placing 7th.

From our super touch team, we had a number of girls who were successful and were invited to trial for NZ or go to an NZ academy camp in Auckland.

These players were; Bella Lister, Katarina Cox-Winiata, Courtney Godinet, and Sammy Colvin.

Overall, Girls’ High has had a successful year of touch, with high participation and commitment to the game. As I now leave CGHS, I wish all future teams good luck and will be supporting from afar.