Emma Malcolm and Ava White...

...returned last week from playing with the NZ Under 21 Women’s team in Ireland and Belgium. In Ireland they played in an International Youth tournament in Belfast where they finished second behind Great Britain U/21 Women. In Belgium they played in an international Senior Women’s tournament in Ypres. (This is a famous WW1 battle area, Flanders Fields.). They were 7th out of the 10 women’s teams but beat all the other Under 21 teams entered, except GB, and played some of the top women’s teams in the world. My son Luke (ex MGS) is the coach of NZ U/21 Women and he told me that Emma and Ava both played very well in both tournaments. At Ypres they played in quite extreme weather conditions, rain, cold and very windy. The photos I’ve attached show how choppy the water was. Both these girls have a good chance of being selected for the World Championships in Rome next year.

Secondly, Mike shared on Monday 12th August that our school teams were successful in the South Island Secondary School Champs in Oamaru that previous weekend. They won gold in both Junior and Senior Girls grades (despite our senior girls playing without Emma and Ava). Our Junior Open (i.e boys) team was third and our two Senior Open teams were second and third. So it was pleasing that all five teams won a medal and, as Mike mentioned, the support of our parents was phenomenal.

However, what warmed my heart more than anything was the reaction of our Senior Open team to something that happened during their final. The boys had lost to Dunstan HS in pool play but in the final played a superb first half and were leading 1-0 until one of our players made a misjudgment and conceded a goal penalty with one second left on the half time clock. So 1-0 became 1-1, but a Goal Penalty Shot brings with it a yellow card which means that the team plays one player short for the next two minutes. This is a big disadvantage because four players are playing five. (And each half is only ten minutes.) This changed the game; Dunstan scored three quick goals to go ahead 4-1 and our boys never recovered, finally succumbing 2-7.

Our player did commit the foul but the awarding of the goal penalty and yellow card was perhaps marginal. However, my reason for telling you all this is to share how impressed I was with the response of our boys. They were very disappointed but showed absolutely no dissent and at the end of the game all of them congratulated the Dunstan boys on their win. As far as I know there has been no complaint at all from any of our boys or parents. In fact afterwards some of them were chatting happily with the referee.

So yes, it is nice to win games and titles but it is even nicer when our players respond so graciously to adversity and are such a credit to the school.