St Paul's ski team - 2018

Ski team takes to the slopes

St Paul's ski team places 14th in the North Island Secondary School competition

St Paul's ski team competed at this year’s North Island Secondary Schools’ Ski Competition held at the Whakapapa ski-fields with two teams. Each team had five racers made up of three senior boys, one senior girl, one junior boy and three reserves.

Due to visibility and bad weather, this annual two-day competition, usually comprising of Giant Slalom, Dual Slalom and Slope Style competitions had to be squeezed into just one day of racing. With the Dual Slalom event cancelled, the SPC ski teams, along with over 550 other competitors from around the North Island had only the Giant Slalom in which to compete.

The teams punched above their weight, performing very competitively against schools who have long and well-established ski team race training programmes and often comprised of racers from a variety of race training institutions around the country.

Sam Cox was our best performing skier who finished a very impressive 11th out of 157 racers in the junior boys’ division.

Other outstanding racers were:

Lucy Phibbs 34th out of 81 senior girls

Henry Mandeno 14th out of 134 senior boys

Callum Shepherd 19th out of 134 senior boys

Jack Russell 29th out of 134 senior boys

Tim Grigg 42nd out of 134 senior boys

As a result of these outstanding individual performances, the St Paul's ski team was awarded 59 points, which saw us placed 14th overall out of 121 competing North Island Secondary Schools.