Toroa has had a wonderful year, in addition to having a fantastic array of students, we’ve been doing some pretty cool things around the school.

As a long standing Toroa tradition, we headed off to Long Beach this year for House Day. We kick started the day with some fun games on the grass, a gumboot toss, an egg-and-spoon race and an egg toss. Later on we moved down to the beach where we had an expedition down to the caves on the northern side of the shore. The Year 13s were in charge of lunch and we had a production line for both the barbecue and the tasty vegetarian/vegan foods. As always we finished off with our annual inter-group Tug-of-War game (and we didn’t break the rope this time!).

Sports Day was a sunny day for champions. As always we had fun and encouraged everyone to participate in the various sports of the day. We won some races, jumped real high and ultimately ended up 3rd place. Bet you can’t guess who was cheering the loudest (pro-tip, it was us).

This year we’ve had quite a few House assemblies with a real Toroa twist. We’ve played games (involving balloons, string and movie freeze-frames), had dance-offs and we diligently read the notices as all true leaders must.

There’s been many inter-house competitions this year, but the one most celebrated in Toroa was the Dodge-ball competition. We showed that the smallest house had the biggest spirit and that’s how we ultimately won that suspiciously green House Cup (also because Toroa is obviously the best House.) Although, whether we won or lost, our spirit would not have been dampened, we’re kinda chill like that.

Toroa has always been conscious of the environment around the school (we are the green House after all), so it shouldn’t surprise you to hear that in order to spread awareness of the growing litter menace Toroa organised a small inter-group competition to produce some sort of anti-litter propaganda media. It also shouldn’t surprise you to hear that when our wonderful principal Jane Johnson heard of this, it became an inter-house competition. The two Toroan pieces shown at the final assembly were 4/4’s (the best group) anti-litter drama piece, and 4/5's (even better group) anti-litter video (I seem to recall sock puppets).

We’ve had some truly amazing achievements from extraordinary Toroa members such as Reva Grills and Jimmy Robinson. Reva won the title of most Outstanding Performer at the National Sheilah Winn Shakespeare festival, which was a competition filled with hundreds of fantastic drama students from all over New Zealand. Jimmy also performed in this competition and was selected to participate in the week-long NSSP Shakespeare workshop with Reva, then selected again to perform in the Globe Theatre in London next year! We also had Tayla Ward who participated in a national luge competition at the very start of the year, winning her a prestigious title along the way!

Us Year 13 leaders of Toroa stand united as one strong Albatribe to serve and protect the students of Toroa. We welcome the next students who will rise to the honour of leading this House, and hope that they find the albatross in their hearts.

The overall spirit of this legendary House is the best part about it, whether we come first or last in challenges, we all cheer the same either way, as one. Our school proudly calls itself a green school and we here in Toroa are pretty sure we all know why.

It’s been a good year, and we’ll miss this House and this school, we hope that next year will be just as good!

-your Toroa Head Prefects: Casey Wheeler, William Kilgour-Hand, Chloe Russell, Guy Russell (no relation), Oisin Quinlan-Thompson, and Simone Williamson.