From the 18th to 22nd of March 2024, the HGHS volleyball team joined over 190 teams at the CET Arena in Palmerston North to compete in the 54th New Zealand Secondary Schools Volleyball Championships. Coming out on top of the Waikato Regional Senior Champs the week before, the girls were buzzing and ready to rumble, despite some of the team being out with injuries. This gave us the opportunity to have some of the juniors along for support as we entered a pool with some highly competitive teams.

After the opening ceremony on Sunday night, the team had some time to settle into their motel rooms and rest before their first game against Sacred Heart Girls' College on Monday afternoon. While they started off well, a crushing loss of 1-3 made it a hard start to the week, which was only made more difficult with a 0-3 loss against Bethlehem College a couple of hours later. Both these games were live-streamed, and the support from friends and family was welcomed, but perhaps added a layer of pressure for our players. Unfortunately, these losses moved our team down to Division 2 for the rest of the week.

The team didn’t let these losses get them down though, and were ready for a solid day of playing on Tuesday with 3-1 wins against both Nelson College for Girls and Otago Girls' High School. Despite having a late duty that night making us one of the last teams left at the venue, the girls were still pumped and ready to go for an 8am game on Wednesday. They took out another 3-0 win against Hasting Girls' High School Senior A team, and had a 3-1 win against Cashmere High School girls.

Our winning streak wasn’t to last all week unfortunately, and our quarter final was a 0-3 loss against Westlake Girls'. This meant we played Nelson College for Girls again in the semi-finals, which was a clean sweep 3-0 win.

The finals on Friday saw us play Lincoln High School A ending in a difficult 0-3 loss, with a few injuries among the team to end the week.

While the week didn’t go as we had hoped, the girls persevered through injuries, early mornings, and late nights to place 6th in Division 2 and 22nd overall for girls in the tournament.

For some, this was their last chance to compete for HGHS, and for others, it was an awesome new experience for them. We look forward to forming another stellar team for the 2025 season!