The stories and photos are from the students and teacher of Paua 1. On Friday 31st of May, 38 of our Year 4 - 6 students travelled to Aquinas College to take part in the Sports & Cultural Day. This event takes place each year, this year it was hosted by St. Mary’s Tauranga.

 Schools from our Coastal Catholic Schools’ Cluster are invited to take part in a variety of activities - this year, we were involved alongside St. Mary’s Tauranga, St. Mary’s Rotorua, St. Mary’s Putaruru and Suzanne Aubert.

The cultural activities we entered were: Chess, R.E/Bible Quiz, Scripture Reading and Drama. We entered three sports teams: Netball, Football and Rippa Rugby.

Here’s what our senior students had to say about the day!

Harmony Kelly-Harding - Chess: After the long welcome in the gym myself and the other 3 chess players (Dyco, Antony and Nathan) gathered in a group and went outside to one of the classrooms. We took 15 minutes just to start then we started, I don't remember who I was playing for the first round. In this version of chess you couldn't take the king off the board so you had to put the king in checkmate, I didn't really understand this rule. For this one round I was paired up with a person from St Mary's Tauranga and the whole time I played I felt worried and pressured to move because he was moving as fast as sonic. I lost that round. The last two rounds were the best because I won both. When I put this one kid in checkmate, he just refused to give up but I got bored so I called the teacher over. At the end of the day, everyone gathered together to present the certificates. When the sportsmanship trophy went to St Mary's Tauranga it sounded like a volcano was exploding and everybody was screaming. At the end of the day I had to wait with James for 45 minutes cause my mum had to finish work. He entertained me with Marco Polo and we sat on the bar outside and we were getting attacked by the Chinese flag. Overall my favourite part of the day was playing with James on my 2 minute break. Also, getting him to go buy me a lollipop because I couldn't leave. I gave him money to buy so I don't feel bad.

Eireann Gallacher - R.E/Bible Quiz: After a long formal welcome, finally we stood up and went to the quiz. As we headed over to the quiz, I realised that we were going to my sister's classroom at Aquinas! When we arrived there were 4 teams waiting; St Mary’s Putaruru, St Mary's Tauranga and Suzanne Aubert. We all thought it would be a Kahoot, but the quiz was actually a big sheet. There were 20 questions, 2 of which were very tricky. I can't remember what the questions are! During the quiz I was constantly checking the window, because I thought football was gonna go on. The man in charge couldn’t mark it because he didn’t have the answers.

Charles Latu - Scripture Reading: Right after we welcomed the schools in the gym, Ani and I got our scripts and went straight to go to the scripture reading competition. We went with Kelsey, Quinn’s mum. The three of us had a hard time trying to find where it was but we found it. I entered the little room along with some other people. I had a look around the room and sat down on the little chair next to me. I put my bag by my feet and waited for everyone else from the other schools to come. A few minutes later a girl started reading with a very tall posture like everyone else did. She finished and everyone started clapping which happened for everyone else. Now it was my turn to go up. I gave the lady my name and the school I go to. Even though it was written on my shirt. She picks the beginning genesis for me to read. I stood tall and started to read “In the beginning…” I'm finished and everyone clapped for me as I went back to my seat. I went back and I sat down on my seat. The lady said drum rolls please and announced the winner, her name was Zoe everyone clapped. I went with Kelsey to go to my Rippa Rugby training because I was playing that as well and then my day went on.

Amaya Surgenor, James Douglas-Watson, and Jeremy Leyses - Drama (The Good Samaritan): After the welcoming, we moved over to a corner to get into our costumes. Lucy didn’t have her costume so Amaya had to give her some of hers. We strolled over to the seats to wait for the first drama group. We watched the other school perform before we were called. Jeremy recalled feeling nervous when he first started, but he said his line pretty well to Brylie which was “What does the law of Moses say? How do you read it” and also “Right! Do this and you will live”. The story was about a man getting robbed (Lucy) and a good samaritan (Brooke) who walked past him then he helped the man get to the inn to take care of him, meanwhile everyone else passed the victim without helping. Then at the end we all stood up and bowed towards the people. Once we bowed, then we watched 3 other plays.

Anika Wijesinghe and Annabelle Fleming - Netball: Before we had our first netball game against St Marys Putaruru we did some warm up drills like shooting, running and we played a small netball game with each other. We all had a small snack. Finally, we started playing netball. We cheered for our team, it was absolutely freezing but we started to warm up while we were playing. We had to play the year five game, even though we had never played it that way. We won our first game of the day. Our second game was against Suzanne Aubert. We tried our best and won the second game. We were all immensely satisfied that we were in the semi finals against St Marys Rotorua… we won that game as well! Our team was so ecstatic and started to celebrate because, St. Thomas More has never ever got to the finals in the Sports and Cultural Day. But, the coach from Suzanne Aubert came and reported that we won’t do the finals because we had some delays for our first game and ran out of time because some schools had to go on the bus. We were all a little bit crestfallen when we heard the news but we were still happy because we tried our hardest. The people organising it said that the winning team will be chosen by calculating the number of points. So, the team that won was St Mary’s Tauranga. Our team (Ani, Anika, Paige, Lucy, Kylie, Pasali, Abigail and Annabelle) and our amazing coach Natalie (Paige’s mum) were still happy. Natalie was very proud of us.

Lila Hatchman and Naiara Steedman - Football: The people in our football team were Esta, Naiara, Brylie, Maya, Lily, Eireann, Charley, Lila and Claudia. Esta was our team captain. Before our first football game, our team was doing a little warm up. It was a little like piggy in the middle but the football version. As soon as we finished our warm up we played our first game at 11:15am against St. Mary’s Rotorua 2. They won and the score was 3-0. After our game we had 20 minutes till the next game. Some of us went to grab lolly bags while waiting. We hopped back on the field for the next game, which was against St Mary’s Putaruru 2 and we got the same score as the last game. But that was okay because we showed good sportsmanship… even though this blond boy was very rude to us and pushed Claudia over! Then we thought we would have time to run around but our next game was straight after.

Serena Heijkoop and Quinn Link - Rippa Rugby: After the welcoming at the warm gym, our team needed to walk in the freezing cold wind over to Aquinas’ back field to start practising for Rippa Rugby. We did some pacing drills and running drills. Our coaches were Kelsey (Quinn’s mum), Alan (Luca’s dad), Toby (Charlie’s dad) and we even had help from Ollie Smyth. The people that were playing in the Rippa team were Serena, Khole, Quinn, Erick, Charles, Luca, Charlie and Kali. Serena was the captain of the Rippa team. The first team we played against was St. Mary’s Tauranga at 10.45am they won 4-0. Then when we had our second game, against Suzanne Aubert. We played Rippa with them at 12.15pm and guess what? We won 7-2! Our third and final game was against St. Mary’s Putaruru at 1.15pm. We had won again, but this time we won 11-3. We thought we were going to make it to the finals, but we didn’t because we needed to win all of our games and we only won 2. But after we finished our last Rippa game we watched a tiny bit of the Rippa finals, and the schools that were playing were St. Mary’s Tauranga and St. Mary’s Rotorua. It was a harsh and insane game. After we finished watching a little bit of the finals we went and got our bags and headed to the nice warm gym. It was such a privilege to come to Aquinas College and play Rippa Rugby. We are so beyond grateful that we got picked to be in the Rippa team.