Special Character Week:

As part of Special Character Week, a number of House competitions were held.

Tug of War (Juniors)

1st Joyce

2nd Marlow

3rd McClintock

3rd Rice

Tug of War (Seniors)

1st McClintock

2nd Joyce

3rd Marlow

3rd Rice

Singing

1st Joyce

2nd McClintock

3rd Marlow

4th Rice

• All Houses sang The Galilee Hymn and then a song of their choice.
• Special thanks to St Thomas Old Boys Sam Hanning, Shady Gerges and Patrick Bowden who were the judges.

Haka and Kaia

1st Marlow

2nd McClintock

3rd Joyce

4th Rice

House Leader Comment:

The next house event was the mighty St Thomas day. We had been practicing the school haka and our house song of “rice rice baby” 

We started with our singing it was a disappointing performance that made all the boys angry and mad turning our house into a bunch of mad dogs. It was a "go hard or go home" moment. All the boys gave it their all but we did not get the results that we were going for and got fourth again. 

We waited anxiously to find out if we were still beating Joyce. When we found out that we were only five points above Joyce ... Rice erupted into a chanting frenzy knowing that we were not at the bottom. As the year progress Rice managed to push ourselves further away from the bottom leaving us close behind Marlow at the end of term 4. We finally finished a creditable third ...  14 points ahead of Joyce.

The highlights for Rice this year was winning the can drive. We managed to get a record number of cans and non-perishable food that was given to the City Mission. Rice also excelled in the Bruce challenges winning three of these events. Overall Rice had a great bunch of leaders that helped with organising Rice and special thanks to Ben O'Connell and Joseph Spijkerman for doing a terrific job of organising the Bruce challenges and Jakob Mangels and Francisco Verbo for general organisation of Rice and their support. It has been a pleasure leading Rice and I hope next year we take the top position.

Thomas Dravitzki