On Monday, August 5th, Columba had three teams competing in the annual Otago-Southland Secondary Schools Ski Racing & Snowboarding Champs, held at Cardrona Ski Field.

This year was one of the coldest days at Cardrona with temperatures around -9ºC, strong winds and many snow showers. Weather aside, the group of 10 girls had a fun day on the mountain, drinking hot chocolate to keep warm, skiing with friends and of course skiing as fast as they could in their races!!

With a mixture of old and new members, we competed in the ‘Ski Individual Banked Slalom’ and ‘Ski Individual Slopestyle’. There was tough competition from a number of Queenstown School teams which consisted of many experienced racers. This didn’t stop our number one team however, as they placed 3rd overall in the competition. This team consisted of, Liberty Vile, Laura Hamilton, Daizy Thompson-Fawcett and Anise Mclean. Liberty Vile scored the 5th fastest individual time of 32.03 seconds, and only just missed out on a medal by milliseconds. Columba’s team two and three managed to gain 5th and 6th placings overall with very respectable times.

It was great to see so many girls getting involved and constantly trying to improve their times and technique on the slopes. A fun and positive attitude was displayed throughout the day by everybody and the girls are extremely happy with the results as we look to potentially competing in the South Island Champs early next month.

The team gratefully thanks Mr Andrew Hamilton and Mr Mark Thompson-Fawcett for all their help and support, especially in the extremely cold conditions!