Term 1 Sports Roundup
We, Danielle and Sarah being sports prefects this year have an overall goal to connect, inspire and challenge students within St Hildas. This term we have kept busy organising what we want to achieve with our role and introducing new initiatives to the school.
We started the term off with athletics day, which held on the second week of school. It was an exciting day filled with house spirit, healthy competition and a high level of participation. The house captions set a great example of showing pride within their house, and it was awesome to see everyone dressed up in their colours. Later on in the term we announced the sports liaisons for 2020. Their role is to support teachers and students while being a ‘face’ of their chosen sport. Us and a couple of the liaisons were lucky enough to attend a coaching workshop for the day. We learnt many different techniques on becoming an all around better coach, specifically for our specialized sports. Some key skills we learnt were based around developing a team culture, how to manage your athletes and how to plan an engaged training. Just recently, the St Hilda's touch, tennis, volleyball and debate team had been competing at the annual quadrangular tournament in Christchurch. Summer Quad is an inter school competition between St Margaret's College, Rangi Ruru College and Craighead Diocesan School and this year St Hildas did very well coming in second overall.
To develop our leadership skills, we both attended a sports prefect workshop. There were other Dunedin schools that attended so it allowed us to share ideas and hear other sport prefects initiatives. The main takeaway from this workshop was looking at creative ways to increase the level of participation, taking part in school related physical activity. We plan to use the knowledge we have gained from this workshop and bring into our role.
Next term our goal is to get our new initiatives underway. For the junior school, we are planning to set up a weekly competition of lunchtime games. This gives the girls something to look forward to during the school day while exercising with friends. We are wanting all the junior students to be as involved as possible, so this will be more social than competitive. Another initiative we would like to bring to St Hildas is online Les Mills fitness classes. We are hoping to encourage individuals or sporting teams to these morning classes who are wanting to get active. We want to ensure that everyone feels comfortable and confident to get amongst the fun.
We are both very excited for the upcoming term and the new initiatives that we have planned!
Thank you, Sarah Johnstone and Danielle Ferguson.
Touch
At the end of last year the Senior A Touch team traveled away to Auckland to compete in the New Zealand Secondary Schools National tournament. From this tournament, and another regional tournament that took place early this year, Demi McAlwee, Gemma Rowcroft, Jaymee Meffan and Luana Ashton all were recognized for their abilities and made the Under 16 NZ Talent ID camp which will be held in Auckland in late September.
At Otago Secondary Schools the Senior A touch team lost by one to Columba in the first game, then beat OGHS convincingly and then redeemed themselves to beat Columba by 1 in the final which meant taking out the title of the Otago Secondary Schools champs.
In March the Senior A touch team went away to quad in Christchurch with two other Christchurch schools and one Timaru school. They won all 3 games, (7-2) against St Margaret's (7-1) against Rangi Ruru and (13-0) against Craighead which meant coming 1st in the touch overall.
Our Senior A and Junior touch teams all had at least two matches every Tuesday in the School Comp down at the oval which gave everyone a good run around. For the juniors there was 3 competitive teams with one year 9 team and two year 10 teams. Many of these girls had never played touch before yet were still keen to get out there and give it a go and all 3 teams ended up doing really well with all of their game scores being close.
The Otago champs for year 9-10 will be played at the start of November followed not long after by a newly organised SISS year 9 and 10 tournament that will hopefully be played at the end of November at Logan park. This allows the juniors to develop their skills and play other touch teams all around the South Island.
Unfortunately, because of COVID-19, the Senior A touch team was not able to finish off their season of touch as the SISS tournament that was meant to be held in the last weekend of March as it was cancelled. However, touch will hopefully be back up and running at the end of the year in term 4 for another great season.
Harriers/Cross Country
We have had a great turnout this term for Harriers, with girls from all year levels turning up. We have had great weather which makes the hard work that much easier. A big shout out to the people who have just started running this term. Feel free to join us next term on harriers, we would all love to see some new people out running with us. Keep an eye out for the Cross Country series starting usually around April. The school Cross Country is scheduled for 20th May.
Volleyball
St Hilda’s volleyball in term one saw two junior competitive teams, three junior social teams, Senior A team and three senior social teams entered in the weekly senior and junior competitions. Due to a shorter season our Senior A finished 8th overall in the weekly senior competition. The senior A did well at summer quad to come 2nd. The junior competitive teams SHCS 1 and SHCS 2 were also successful in the weekly junior competition. SHCS 1 finishing 2nd overall and SHCS 2 finishing 5th overall.
Adventure Racing
On March 14, for the first time ever, St Hildas entered an Adventure Racing team team (Annabel Bilkey, Megan Foster, Murphy Scott and Grace Cotter) that competed in the South Island Secondary Schools Adventure Racing Champs in Cromwell. They started at 6:00am and navigated the 70km course around Bannockburn and the surrounding hills while mountain biking, trekking, abseiling and kayaking. The team completed the full course in 10 hours and 30 minutes, and final results haven't been posted. Well done to the girls, and thank you to Mr West for organizing this.
Orienteering
This year we had 8 girls competing in the Dunedin summer schools orienteering series. St Hilda’s won the senior girls trophy, this involved the 6 seniors combining their total scores. Two year sevens competed in the intermediate section, and their combined total earned them 4th. Congratulations to all the girls who took part.
The Otago Schools Champs were held on the 22nd of March in Flagstaff forest, with Grace Cotter getting 2nd in the senior girls category.
Orienteering is fun, and can be either social or competitive, so we would love to see more girls participating next year.
Futsal
St Hilda’s futsal had a very enjoyable, if short, season this term. Our 6 teams have played in a weekly competition at the Edgar center, with our year 7 and 8 team on Tuesday afternoons and 5 year 9-13 teams on Thursday afternoons. As with other sports, the season has been stopped halfway through due to the current circumstances, but the games have been scheduled to continue May 2nd.
We were lucky to have the Otago Secondary schools tournament before the lockdown, on the 13th of March. Two of our senior teams competed in this, and it was the highlight of the futsal season for many of the girls. Senior red and Senior blue had extremely tight pool games, each winning 2 games and losing 1. Senior blue was top of their pool, and played a hard final before coming 2nd overall. Senior red was second in their pool, and won their final coming 3rd overall. A great effort from both of these teams!
It was exciting to see our 3 junior teams have senior student coaches this term - this shows these girls are giving back to their sport as well as strengthening bonds with the younger students through leadership opportunities.
Rowing
The St Hilda’s rowing squad had a very successful season with a small but hardworking team. This season consisted with many early mornings and afternoon and weekend sessions, with all the girls putting in the hard work and striving for great results.
The seniors a week prior to canterbury champs headed up to Twizel for a training camp teaming up with Otago Boys to improve fitness and technique on and off the water. This started with the dreaded 2km test in 30-degree heat. This involved biking, running, rowing, ergging with a rowing triathlon while constantly being pushed to new and harder limits.
The juniors headed out to Henley the week before Canterbury Champs to focus strongly on there technique and fitness and working together as a team, this lead to a few tired girls but also a great chance for the girls to clock up the kilometres and find crews at work well together before heading up to Twizel to meet the seniors and get prepared for canterbury champs. We had 12 boats entered and all making finals, 7 being A finals and 5 being B finals!
A short turn around of 2 weeks and we were back in Twizel for South Island Club Champs. We had a total of 11 boats entered and 5 A finals and 5 B final. The senior girls were very fortunate to get the opportunity to row with Dunstan in an u17 girls eight resulting with them getting a bronze medal. Another highlight from the regatta was when Sophie Smith took out the bronze in the u17 girls single sculls.
A month later we were back in Twizel for our first regatta representing St Hilda’s. This was a major step up from previous regattas as this was a 3 day regatta. We had a total of 8 boats entered with 3 A finals and 4 B finals. The squad was super excited watching Sophies A final in the girls u17 single sculls and her getting 2nd and taking the silver medal. We also had many crews get there fastest times this weekend which made for some really happy girls on the drive home and wrapping up a good weekend.
Unfortunately, the season has been cut short this resulting in Maadi being cancelled. This lead to a lot of tears and frustration and feeling as though we were in a long term relationship and got dumped as this was the end goal and what we had been training and leading up to for 7 months and for some 3 years. It was especially sad as this was the juniors first-ever Maadi and one of our seniors last Maadi’s. Although we were disappointed we still gained a lot from the past season with improvements in our fitness and technique and also the opportunity to make heaps of new friendships with girls in other year levels ranging from year 10 to 13 and also friendships with other schools and clubs around the South Island.
2019-2020 season athletes:
Millie Davenport (Captain), Sophie Smith (Deputy Captain), Christy Foster, Elsie Burnside, Hannah Lawrence (Coxswain), Kate Beaton, Laura Ring, Lucy Taylor, Lucy Wright, Olivia Ollerenshaw, Peta Ericsson, Pippa Fulton
Athletics
St Hilda’s started off the athletics season strongly with our school athletics day down at the Caledonian. Athletics Day demonstrated that house rivalry is alive and well with everyone, including the teachers, all getting into the spirit with extravagant costumes representing their house colours. It was kicked off with the Y12 cheerleading which was taken out by Lawrence. Thankfully, after a colder start to the morning, the sun showed up and helped to create a festive and positive atmosphere. There was great participation across the school, with Tilly really demonstrating her impressive athletics ability, and a real sense of inclusiveness.
We had a good turn out at Otago Secondary Schools Athletics in early March with a total of 14 athletes competing in a variety of events. Some notable performances came from Zara Geddes who placed 1st in the U15 3000m and broke the record with a time of 10:35.69, she also placed 1st in the 1500m and 1st in the 800m. Renee Willis placed 1st in the U15 Shot Put and broke the record with a put of 13.20m, she was also 2nd in the discus and 2nd in the Hammer. Bridget Sinclair was 1st in the U16 long jump, 2nd 800m, 2nd 400m and 5th in the 200m. Gabi Horo was 1st in the U16 pole vault. Sophie Shallard was 1st in the U19 1500m. Emma McKay placed 1st in the U19 triple jump, 2nd in the long jump and 2nd in the shot put. Sarah Langsbury placed 1st in the 300m hurdles, 1st 100m hurdles, 1st long jump and 2nd in the 100m. Anna Carswell placed 4th in the U15 200m. Perri Hore placed 4th in the U14 long jump. Breane Byck placed 5th in the U15 long jump. Then to finish off the day our U15 4x100 relay team of Perri Hore, Phoebe Jaquiery, Zara Geddes and Sophia Le placed 3rd.
National Secondary Schools are being held in Tauranga in December this year. So all up a very successful athletics season.