Over the weekend, 41 students from Otago Girls' travelled to Queenstown for the 2024 NZCAF Hip Hop and Aerobics Championships, alongside Mrs Parkinson, Ms Hayward, Ms Joyce, Mrs Beaman and Miss Veenvleit. Hip Hop was on Friday night and our two school teams, 'Infamous' and 'Kustard 2.0' performed exceptionally well but were unfortunately beaten out for the contested spots in finals. In the Dance School category, however, OGHS students were very successful. Emily Aubin, Meg Taylor, Hayley Ward and Maya Satake gained first place in the Megacrew category, with Emily, Meg and Hayley also gaining a first place in the Small Crew HHU Future Champion category with their RASA crew 'DFYNT'. Maya Satake was extremely successful as she placed first in another two categories - Small Crew HHU with crew 'ALLIES' and the hotly contested Minicrew category with her pair 'MnM'. Miss V also showed the students how it's done, competing and winning in the Small Adult HHU category with her crew 'Blessed', who are heading to Portugal in October. 

The Hip Hop students headed home on Saturday morning with Mrs Parkinson, while everyone else remained for another two days of competing. An amazing number of students qualified for finals, which meant that Sunday was equally as busy. Gold medals went to students Ava Williams, Holly Tyson, Issy Fahey, Macy Woodason, Lily Bulmer, Maia Larsen, Poppy Annison, Harmony White and Ruby Brew. Lily Barker gained two silver medals, alongside Immy Morey who took out second place in the FISAF Youth Individual Category. Bronze medals went to Lucia Morey and Emma Maley, and Holly Tyson got an individual Bronze alongside her team Gold. 

Immy Morey was also presented with her NZ Representative jacket. Though she will not be able to travel to Worlds this year, due to the competition being cancelled because of flooding in Brazil, it was still a massive achievement and great to see Immy celebrated. After Prizegiving. 

After a massive weekend, we were all excited to return home to our own beds, but it was totally worth it to see all of the students perform and support each other so well!