Here we have 4 students who have written an article each about their chosen sport and how they have gone this season.

Table Tennis - Winter Sport 2020 - Seth & Kevin

One of the sports in Winter Sport 2020 is Table Tennis. This year, we have 30-40 people in the team - Yr 5/6 have about 5 teams, and Yr 7/8 have 3 teams. The place where we were playing was Table Tennis Canterbury located on Blenheim Road. This year, the students loved the Table Tennis sport in addition to being on the bus. Due to COVID Alert level 2, games have been shortened to about 5 games this year. We hope next year, we can have full Winter Sports games. Table Tennis has been my favorite sport for two years. This year I have improved a lot on Table Tennis and one way was to just ‘Watch and Learn’! We hope the students will enjoy Winter Sport Next year!

Interview - Kevin has trained in table tennis since he was 8 years old. He says, “for such a small ball, there are so many ways to hit it - to slow it down, speed it up, change the spin, direction and space. It is always a challenge to control the ball, to make it do what you want it to do.” Kevin is training hard to become a professional table tennis player and enjoys the feeling of playing and success.

Netball Winter Sport 2020 - Neela and Petra

This year in addition to playing netball for Merrin Netball Club on a Saturday, we have been in the Year 7/8 A netball winter sports team. We train on Wednesday mornings before school and we play on a Friday afternoon at the Christchurch Netball Center in Hagley Park. Our team consists of 10 players who work hard every training and game to improve their netball skills and help the team and Mr Russell is our coach. This season has been a good one, we have won each game that we have played and in the North West Zones. We came first equal with two other teams (we won within the three teams by goal ratio) and we are excited to go to Centrals!! Those Year 4, 5, 6, 7’s who enjoy and know how to play netball, we strongly recommend trying out for netball in 2021.

“It was fun to be with friends and teachers” - Ebony

Football Winter Sport 2020 - Joseph

One of the many winter sports options in Term 3 was football, a sport where you and your team of 9 have to dribble, sprint, dive, tackle, shoot, pass and header - the list goes on and on and on. This year with the help of my older brother Mo, the Year 7/8 football team has only gone through one loss out of three in the season. But in the tournament we played, we had won all of our games and placed 1st out of 6 schools. That meant for the first time, some of the teammates and I were heading to CENTRALS. This was a goal for all of us. When we met up again with the year 7/8 hockey and found out that they came first equal and they were making it to Centrals! We were all so happy. Placing first didn't come without training. We had two training sessions a week and two training sessions a week wasn’t enough for some of us, including me. So one-quarter of our players, including me, have multiple training sessions throughout the week. I have a training session on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, a school game on Friday and a club game on Saturday.

Hockey winter sport 2020 - TJ

Hockey is a team sport with a collaborative team working together to dribble the ball, pass and shoot the ball into the goal. There are usually in our year grade, 6 players on a team (2 forwards, 2 midfielders, and 2 backs). We have 40-minute games with four quarters in-between that. Tackling - the object of tackling is to use your stick to try and steal the ball off the other player. Attacking - when you attack you have to have a good forward pack that works well and pass with each other, you also have to have a good formation and tactics and your midfielders can join in and help as well. This year the Year 7/8 team played four games in the pool stages and won by at least 12 or more points each game, we were at the top of the leaderboard until we reached Zones. At zones we played a series of games between the top teams on the leaderboard, we won every single game there, except for one game against Westburn which we tied 3-3. We are now going to Centrals!