The NZCAF Aerobics Regionals were held in Invercargill on Saturday 15th and Sunday 16th of August. Columba College was represented by a group of 28 students competing in a wide variety of levels and age groups. Training started early in Term One or even last year for some of our senior athletes and last weekend they finally got to showcase their talents and how hard they have all been working!

Heats and finals were on the same day for this competition and Saturday started with the year 9/10 girls competing along with our coaches Olivia Ferris, Emma McCaughan and Jo O’Halloran. Josie O’Neil was the first competitor of the day along with Ellery Taylor and Zara Glover competing in the same category of Secondary Pre-Choreographed Individual. All three girls went out there and really enjoyed themselves. Then Zara and Ellery, Josie and her partner Lucy Quill competed in the Secondary Pre-Choreographed Team category with Josie and Lucy coming in second place and Zara and Ellery making the final! Next up we had Bridgette Sutton and Emily Ung place third in Novice Teams with a great routine and Bridgette, Emily and Lucy all then competed in Secondary Novice for their individuals. Special mention to Lucy Quill for making this final in a super tough category in her first year competing!

To finish on Saturday we had our coaches compete with Olivia Ferris and Jo O’Halloran coming in second in Secondary Teams and Emma McCaughan coming first in the Adult Fitness Team category. These three then all competed their individuals in a super tough category in Senior Open Individual with Olivia making it through to the final and Jo and Emma narrowly missing out.

Our coaches were in for a big day on Sunday coaching 22 routines all within the intermediate categories. The day started with Matilda Sutton, Arabella Boaden-Trotter, Taylor Skevington, Aiva Pattinson-Trent, Olivia Wallace, Emillie Mathews and Rahwa Steel all competing in the heats for Intermediate Pre-Choreographed Individual category. This was a big category for our newbies and Aiva, Olivia and Matilda all made it to the final where Olivia came in third place and Aiva took out the win for this category! Awesome effort for these three who all performed great routines.

Next up we had Charli Sinclair, Ruby Jones, Maggie Murdoch, Frankie Macready, Meg Cameron, Madison Logan-Ferris, Tayla Brough and Hannah Bloxham compete in the Intermediate Individual category and with another very big and high standard category Charli, Ruby and Madison took up half of the 6 athletes in the final. Charli placed third and Madison went on to take out the win for this category!

All of the girls then teamed up to compete in their pairs/trios. First up we had Matilda/Lula Joseph, Taylor/Arabella, Rahwa/Hannah/Danielle Walker, Tayla/Ruby and Aiva and Madison Foote compete in Intermediate Pre-Choreographed Teams heats where Aiva/Madison, Matilda/Lula, Tayla/Ruby and Rahwa/Hannah/Danielle all made it through to the final! Columba then went on to have a clean sweep in this category with Lula/Matilda coming third, Aiva/Madison coming second and Tayla and Ruby coming in first place, awesome job girls and results for Columba College!!

Finally to finish off the weekend we had Maggie and Charli make up ‘MC Squared’ and Madison, Meg and Frankie make up ‘Don’t Stop the Trio’ to compete in Intermediate Teams. With a straight final Don’t Stop the Trio came in fourth place and MC Squared came in third place!

Overall it was an amazing experience for all of our girls competing for the first time who learned a lot about the competition atmosphere! Seventeen of our girls came away with a medal or even two and Columba College was 4 points off winning the Shield for the highest scoring school from the whole competition! All of our medalists Emma, Olivia Ferris, Jo, Lucy, Josie, Bridgette, Emily, Lula, Matilda, Madison Foote, Aiva, Olivia Wallace, Ruby, Tayla, Charli, Maggie and Madison Logan-Ferris have all qualified to compete in Nationals in September and we await in anticipation to hear if all finalists have also qualified!

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