Power Lifting, Futsal, Darts

Bailey Cumming

Over the weekend of 20 August, Bailey competed in the National Power Lifting Championships. He WON the sub-junior male category! In his own words “I’m officially the strongest kid in the country”. Congratulations Bailey.

Futsal

During the July school holidays, Shirley boys - Shaun Regaldo, Jack Woolcott and Lewis Chumiskey played in the Canterbury Under-16 futsal team at the Nationals held in Palmerston North . Their team took out the National title with a 4 -1win over Central Hawkes Bay. The Canterbury team was undefeated playing 8 games over 3 days.

SBHS's first ever representative to NZ PDC Open Darts Tournament

This year saw Matt Kendall (Year 11) travelled to Invercargill in July to compete in the annual New Zealand PDC National Age Group and Open Tournament. Watch out for this young sportsman, he has a keen eye, a competitive spirit and a great focus.

"I play darts for Papanui WMC on Wednesday nights in Christchurch and have been picked as a Canterbury Rep 3 times this year. At school I usually play every Monday, Wednesday and Friday lunchtimes in Mr Skinner’s classroom – F1.

This is my second year playing darts, I play mostly in the winter season, but they do have a summer season as well.

In the months leading up to Nationals, I had to increase my practise and spent a lot of time at school and at home practicing. Darts is sport of very fine margins and the more you practise the more accurate you become. Practise was also helped by Mr Skinner giving me a lot of games, in fact he let me join his form class for a few weeks before the tournament so I could practise at the start of the day too.

There were a large number of darts players of all ages, shapes and sizes in Invercargill and it was a real eye-opener being a junior amongst all these ‘experienced’ players.

The first part of the tournament for me was the New Zealand Junior Division where at a full day of section games and then playoffs I came 3rd equal. Unfortunately I lost to the eventual winner in the semi-final. Then, over the next two days, I played in the Open section in both singles and pairs.

While there, I got to meet a few of the top New Zealand players like Cody Harris, Rob Szabo and Warren Parry.

It was a great trip and I managed to win $10 in prize money – even in New Zealand, darts is a professional sport! I plan to win a lot more prize money in the future. That $10 was just the start of my darts career."