It’s been a challenging start to the year for Spartan Sport at SBHS with Covid regulations/health orders confusing and complicating participation. Staff and students spending time in isolation has also added a layer of difficulty in getting underway.

Despite this, our summer sports have been able to go ahead under various change, with Cricket, Touch, Rowing, Volleyball, Futsal, Tennis, Surfing, Korfball, Ultimate Frisbee all underway with competition.

Our JSP programme (where non-competitive play is the focus for our Year 9 students) has been well attended. A reminder that sport is compulsory for Year 9’s for two terms and sports available include things like table tennis, archery and darts.

Winter sport trials are beginning to occur, please keep an eye on the notices for times and locations. Parents can access the school notices through the parent portal to stay up-to-date.

As of 11:59pm on the 12th of March, all students are now eligible to participate in school sport activities regardless of vaccination status. Standard eligibility criteria set by the organiser of events will still be in place. Students cannot be asked for proof of vaccination status when participating for a school representative team. The below is some key points around this.

• Students who are in a school-organised team, group or individual activity cannot be asked for a vaccine pass and must be treated by the activity organiser or venue operator as if they were vaccinated.

• There is no change to the vaccine requirements for staff and volunteers supporting any school activity involving children and young people – they must be vaccinated and may be asked by venue staff to provide evidence of their vaccination.

• Sport NZ and School Sport NZ recommends event organisers take a pragmatic approach to the introduction of this change – where it is possible to incorporate participants that may have been previously excluded due to the legislation in place at that time, you should. Where this might present significant disruption to competitions we recommend proceeding with already selected teams or squads.

• Where a young person is representing any team other than a school representative team, My Vaccine Pass may still be required within the current changes to the Health Order.

• Changes will apply to all venues, including council venues, that are used for school organised activities and require a Vaccine Pass.

• Vaccine Pass requirements will no longer apply for those participating in school-related activities (curricular or extracurricular). Students will be ‘exempt’ from vaccine pass requirements and there will be no requirement for facilities to partition off space for these groups.

• For council venues that have chosen to not apply a Vaccine Pass setting or have chosen not to host EOTC activities, there is no change.

• A reminder that at Red, these activities will still be able to have up to 100 participants in a defined space, so long as the adult participants have a My Vaccine Pass.

We appreciate that there will be many more questions and specific scenarios that will need to be interpreted as we move forward and we will address these as they arise.

Lastly, I’d like to extend a massive thank-you to all involved in the administering of sport here at SBHS whether you be a coach, manager, MIC/TIC or a parent helping with transport; it is all vitally appreciated.

Good luck to those participating in Summer tournament beginning Week 9.

Nga mihi, 

Jamyn Keats
Director of Spartan Sport