Katikati College students were very excited to get the opportunity to attend and compete at the AIMS Games 2022, after a two year hiatus. With the help of plenty of amazing community and school coaches and managers we managed to enter 7 teams and 9 individuals. They were Netball 7s, Netball 5s, Hockey Girls, Hockey Mixed, Rugby 7s, Football Boys & Futsal Girls along with four competitors in the Cross Country, one in the BMX and four in the Mountain Biking.

Our week started on the Sunday with the Cross Country. Emma Turton ran in the Year 8 Girls and Benji Ussher, Blake Stephens and Connor Davy in the Year 8 Boys. All the races were incredibly quick with two records broken so it was a challenging day for our runners who ran determined races. The best result was Ussher finishing 44th out of 121 runners.

Our BMX'er Nixon Pointon raced on Monday and Tuesday and was our most successful athlete finishing with two Bronze Medals. Nixon consistently finished in the top 3 for all the disciplines giving him 3rd overall for both the time trial and the individual motos. In the time trials he raced his two attempts in 44.219 and 44.168 just 1.5 seconds behind the gold medalist. In the Individual Motos he was extremely good finishing with a 1st, 3 x 2nds and a 3rd giving him another Bronze. Congratulations Nixon, most excellent racing!

Our Mountain Bikers had the most picturesque venue up at Summerhill MTB Park. All four riders competed in both the Cross Country and the Enduro races. All raced extremely well and really enjoyed their experiences. With 85 riders in the Year 8 Boys XC, our boys did really well with Toby Gilbert finishing 28th, Damon Batenburg 36th, Ethan Carleton 37th and Regan Le Cheminant 64th. The tough Enduro's were held the next day and again they raced extremely well. There were 3 different stages, the BT Track, Beeftub and the Flying Mullet. Out of 93 Year 8 Boys, our best result was from Ethan in 8th with Toby 16th, Damon 18th, Regan 81st. Thanks to all the awesome parents who set up a cool hub to hang out in with snacks and shade.

Our teams were fantastic and as is the AIMS way, all had very tough days to start. The weather on day 1 Monday was atrocious - extremely cold and wet making it a miserable start and due to the seedings of the pools is always a big reality check for our young athletes coming up against very large intermediates some of whom have over 1000 pupils (for perspective we have 244). However as always, our students dug deep and played their hearts out to the end of every game.

Congratulations must go to our Netball 7s team who made the A Grade for the first time, an amazing result as well as our Netball 5s, playing in the shortened fast game for the first time. They really rose to the challenge of this new format, including our coaches who had to upskill quickly and Roseanne Moeakiola-Martin who had to learn to umpire the fast version. The full results can be found on Katikati College Sports page but final placings were:

Rugby 7s - 34th, Netball 7s - 30th, Netball 5s -  7th, Hockey Girls - 21st, Hockey Mixed - 44th, Football Boys - 43rd, Futsal Girls - 14th.

Huge congratulations to all our athletes for a wonderful week of sport. Well done to all our student umpires who stepped up to the challenge with Gemma Groenewald securing the top spot in the Netball 7s A final and Siobhan McFadyen getting the B final. Theo Turnwald also did really well getting the Bronze Final for Mixed Hockey.  Netball - Gemma Groenewald, Siobhan McFadyen, Chloe Salmon & Roseanne Moeakiola-Martin, Hockey - Theo Turnwald, Murdoch Cameron,  Football - Declan Millichip, MTB - Cam Gilbert track marshall.

Katikati College Sports would like to extend their sincere thanks and appreciation to all our coaches and managers who have stepped up to enable our teams to make it to AIMS Games. It literally could not be done without you. Huge thanks must go to:

Rugby - Jason O'Connor, Amy King, Murray Fraser

Football Boys - Steve Flude, Caroline Casey, Nic Millichip 

Hockey Girls - Laura Young, Toni Morgan

Hockey Mixed - Beau Moka, Mikaela Salmon, Shelle Jensen

Futsal Girls - Adrian Taylor, Nicky Walter 

Netball 7s - Amy Turner, Terangi Tangata

Netball 5s - Kate Downes, Grace Skayman, Rachel Hale

BMX - Michele Pointon

MTB - Femke Batenburg, Shearene Lombard , Alex Carleton, Jo Gilbert.