We have been steaming through Term 2 at our usual rate of knots. The weather has certainly been putting a spanner in the works recently with the netball tournament in Ashburton being cancelled over Queens Birthday weekend and the Jelly Bean tournament being postponed. Fingers crossed the next few weekends are brighter and drier.

Please do remember to get in touch with us if you have any sporting news to share, we love hearing from you louise.eder@stmargarets.school.nz 

Basketball

Photo Senior A playing Papanui with a loss for us 74-65.

We heard from two of our basketball teams this week.
“SMC Green team has had a great start to the season and won all but one game. We’ve enjoyed playing together and had lots of fun versing other teams where we know lots of the girls. We are excited to carry on the rest of the season.” Team Green

“The year 10 Rockets have had an interesting start to the season. Losing all of our games so far, but always being so energetic anyway. Whenever they shoot a basket even if they are losing by heaps they celebrate like they have just won. They brighten up my Friday night that is for sure. The team is composed of Molly Backhouse, Lucy Foster, Hannah Gubb, Scarlett Hanrahan, Zoe Cookeson, Ruby Dorrance, Lilliana Murray-Orr, Margo Pattie, Lucy Tod and Neve Cassidy. These girls have improved since their first game and are continuing to get better. Let’s hope they will get a win in the upcoming weeks of play. They are always so full of energy and happy.” Piper Eder Y10 coach

CSS Cross Country
The Canterbury Secondary Schools Cross Country was held on the 3rd of June at the Ascot Golf Course in perfect conditions. Our runners did extremely well and gave the day their all. For our Year 9 girls this was their first experience at jumping the hurdles, which resulted in the 'Runner of the Day' going to Sophie Booth, who fell hard at the first hurdle but bravely picked herself up to finish the race in a creditable 12th place. The photo of Sophie was taken just seconds before disaster struck.

Congratulations to all our SMC athletes;
U16 Results: Anna Babington 2nd, Sam Lascelles 6th

Year 9: Margo Dalling 9th, and the team of Margo Dalling, Sophie Booth, Lulu Inglis and Gemma Sitjes 1st, with all 4 runners finishing in the top 16 girls.

Football
Our Football captain Elizabeth Kinney is proud to tell us that the A team has been promoted this season. She writes; “SMC Football has had a great start to the season. The A team has moved up to the Premier League this year which has given us new challenges and opportunities as a team to get closer and work better together. We've had some challenging games with close scores where the girls have worked incredibly hard right till the end whistle. We are really enjoying playing and having fun together.”

Gymnastics
Mya Hutchings (Y10) competed at the Margaret Woolf Memorial and 2021 NZSS Rhythmic gymnastics events in Auckland on the 29th and 30th of May. Mya did extremely well placing 3rd Overall, 1st in hoop and 3rd in the ribbon. Mya is an accomplished and well-travelled gymnast here she tells us a bit about her journey so far; “I have been doing Rhythmic Gymnastics at Olympia Gymnastics Sports in Wigram since I was five. My coach for the first eight years was Elena Mesheryakova and the last year has been Kathryn Holdsworth. Both are amazing coaches so I have been very lucky. I train five days a week, around 18 hours a week which is a drop from previous years when it has been up to 28 including ballet and dance at the gym.

I attended around six competitions each year in Auckland, Dunedin, Wellington and Christchurch finishing each season with Nationals. I have qualified and competed at Nationals every year I have been eligible, most with at least one apparatus placing. I have also competed in Melbourne four times, Malaysia and Japan. I represented New Zealand at the Australian Nationals in 2016, I was the youngest member of the NZ squad at nine years old. From Melbourne, we went on to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia where I got into finals and I got 9th out of over 100 gymnasts. Our group of four gymnasts from NZ got 4th overall. I competed in Osaka, Japan in 2019 and placed 7th out of about 80 gymnasts. My tally of medals is 65, made up of 22 gold, 22 silver and 21 Bronze. My goal at the moment is to have an overall podium finish at this year’s Nationals in Auckland in July. After that, I would love to have more international travel, when borders open up. I have just got back from competing in Auckland for the Secondary Schools comp where I placed 3rd Overall, 1st in hoop and 3rd in the ribbon.” Mya  

Hockey
We have three girls in the 2nd X1 Hockey team this year that are all related. Meet the McNeill sisters, Maddy Y12, Poppy and Chloe Y10.

“I’ve been playing hockey since I was about 5 years old and have played for HSOB/Burnside my whole hockey life. Once I started at SMC in Y9 I began playing for them too. With having two sisters that also play for school and club it can be a very busy week with training and games. Last year between my two sisters and I, we had 6 different games and training sessions a week. This meant lots of running around for mum and dad as we made three different school teams and three different club teams. Things have been made a lot easier this year with the three of us making the 2nd X1 together, me playing div 2 for HSOB and the twins playing platinum 1 for the same club. This is the first time in the whole time I have played hockey that my sisters and I will be playing together. I am excited for the season to come and the games we will win and lose together. I think some goals and aspirations the three of us have for our sporting life in hockey is to eventually play for the SMC 1st X1 and play in the red dress. This is definitely a big goal the three of us will work towards over the season. “Maddy McNeill

“I’ve been playing hockey since I was 5. This is the first time Chloe, Maddy and I have ever been in the same team. Our training schedule is pretty busy. We all have one club training and game and one school training and game, then fitness for school hockey. My goal for the future is to be in the first XI one day. To me, being in the same team as my siblings gives us the opportunity to grow a closer relationship and work together.” Poppy

“This is my first year playing alongside my sisters. It's going to be a very interesting season. I've been playing hockey since I was around 3 years old and I play for the High School Old Boys club” Chloe 

Our Canterbury U18 A representative players Issy Story, Niamh McKenzie and Mezzy Surridge played in a tournament against Otago over Queen’s Birthday weekend and came away with good wins over their southern counterparts.

Honours Awards
The Honours award is an extremely proud moment in the journey of being an SMC student. To achieve that coveted red blazer is a huge milestone. When girls start at St Margaret’s and have their fittings at Maggie's shop, the number one question is ‘What is the red blazer for?' Congratulations to the following four students who were awarded their red blazers for sporting achievements and were presented with them at the Combined Assembly on Thursday 27th May.

Lily Cockram - Athletics
Georgia Reed - Water Polo
Sienna McEwan - Swimming
Millie Harris - Equestrian

Netball
A big congratulations to the following girls who have been selected in Christchurch representative teams:
U16 A - Josie Seymour
U16 Red - Evie Leeson
U16 Black - Charlotte Coughlan, Milly Farrell, Ellese Haigh
U18 A - Te Ata Hassan, Georgia Reed
U18 B - Evie Meyer

Unfortunately due to the recent deluge of rain and the subsequent flooding the U16 teams were not able to play in the tournament in Ashburton over the Queen's birthday weekend.
Christchurch's U18 representative teams performed well at the Queen's Birthday Tournament at Bishopdale YMCA.
Christchurch Red was untroubled in each of their games following on from a strong performance on Saturday against North Canterbury (57-21) in the curtain-raiser to The Good Oil Tactix game.
Christchurch Black performed well in three games, only suffering the one loss to Invercargill.

Under 18 Red
v South Canterbury 58-18
v Invercargill 38-26
v North Canterbury 55-17
v Selwyn 40-12
Under 18 Black
v Marlborough 25-16
v North Canterbury 35-33
v Invercargill 18-36
v Te Waipounamu 41-19

The teams will continue preparations for Nationals in Rotorua in July.

Georgia Reed writes; “Over the long weekend, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to play the Curtain Raiser match for the Tactix vs Pulse game on Saturday afternoon with the Christchurch U18 Red team, along with Te Ata Hassan. This was the team’s first hit out of our campaign and was awesome to get the opportunity to play in such a cool environment. The growth and development of the team throughout the game were incredible giving us a good platform to build on leading into the Queen’s Birthday Tournament. This tournament saw us building connections on and off the court in preparation for U18 Nationals in mid-July. Each game gave us the chance to become aware of each other's strengths and style of play, while also developing different combinations on court. The group of girls is incredible on and off the court and the weekend was not just full of learnings but also laughter and fun. Not only am I excited for the rest of our campaign building towards the Nationals, but also to play more netball alongside these girls.

Volleyball
Volleyball isn’t just a summer sport and the winter season is equally as busy. Thank you to Paula Vesty who accompanied some of our Volleyballers up to Wellington over Queen’s Birthday weekend. She writes; “Over the long weekend, we had four of our Senior A volleyballers competing for Canterbury in the New Zealand Interprovincial Championships in Wellington. The competition is fierce with 12-14 associations from around New Zealand competing for the titles. Ivy Brown competed in the U17 grade and finished third securing a bronze medal and Ella Ballantyne, Annabelle Goodwin and Emily O'Connor finishing a strong fourth in the U19 grade. The winter season of club volleyball is well underway and the next big event for those athletes is the New Zealand Club Championships in October. Coming up on the calendar is the National Volleyball League with two weekend events in Auckland and Christchurch. You can go along to the Christchurch event and watch our top athletes battling it out in drafted teams.“

For more information go to https://www.volleyballnz.org.nz/