Sports Department

Sports Liaisons - Brooke Callon and Brooke McAlwee

With the winter sports season coming to a close, we’ve seen great success across all codes. Due to the recent Covid-19 lockdown, Secondary School Winter Tournament Week had to be cancelled and many finals were unable to be played. This was disappointing news for many, including both of us.

Unfortunately our annual inter-house swimmings sports has been postponed, but it’s looking unlikely it’ll fit it into the busy school calendar for Term 4. Although there haven’t been any school-wide sports events this term, students have had the opportunity to participate in weekly Les Mills classes. Numbers have increased since lockdown, as the girls are enjoying being back in the presence of one another. The warm weather and lighter mornings have made the morning HIIT classes more enjoyable and we hope for this to continue in Term 4!

Earlier in the term, a sports coach workshop was held for our student coaches to recognise and acknowledge their hard work. Grant Milne from Sport Otago kindly gave up his time to share some words of wisdom on how to get the most out of our athletes. The workshop was accompanied by a delicious breakfast, provided by the Sports Department.

In August, St Margaret’s held the Winter Quadrangular tournament for 2021 - hosting St Hilda’s, Columba College, and Craighead. As usual, we saw some tough competition across all four sports which was reflected in the final standings. Both our First XI hockey and debating teams finished 1st, after beating classy St Margaret’s sides for the top spots. The Senior A netball team finished 2nd, after a 1 goal loss to St Margarets, and our badminton team placed 4th respectively. Overall St Hilda’s came away with second place, after losing by half a point to the host school.

Although a lot of winter sports were cut short, the seasons were jam-packed while they lasted. We look forward to next term where our summer codes start back up - fingers crossed for no interruptions!

Have a great break, Brooke & Brooke 

Aerobics - Gabi Horo

Term 3 has been an action-packed one for St Hildas Aerobics. Fortunately, on the 14th and 15th of August, our athletes were able to compete at NZCAF regionals held at Kavanagh College, the weekend before we went into lockdown! At this competition all the girl’s hard work paid off, showcasing some amazing performances including our very own Miss Geary - who hit the stage in an adult fitness team! This was a very busy weekend but St Hilda’s came away with some impressive results, including 17 athletes qualifying for nationals in Wellington in November!

Some Highlights included:

• Issy Tierney and Bridget Sinclair - 1st in FISAF Senior duo
• Girls Gone Bad (Maia Lamb, Issy Tierney and Amelia Johnston) - 1st Secondary Fitness Team
• Chloe Woodhouse (with Imogen Morey OGHS) - 1st in FISAF Junior Duo
• Chloe Woodhouse - 1st Junior Secondary Open individual
• Rylee May - 2nd Senior Secondary Open Individual
• Cassie Horo and Sasha Lamb - 3rd in Secondary Open Teams
• Molly Luxton and Bonnie Wilson - 2nd Pre-Choreographed Intermediate Team
• Molly Wagner and Kyla Ashton - 2nd Secondary Novice Teams
• Zara Geddes - 2nd Senior Secondary Open Novice Individual
• Alexia Jones - 3rd Senior Secondary Open Novice Individual
• Sasha Lamb - 3rd Junior Secondary Open Novice Individual

Other routines qualifying for nationals:

• Sophie Lloyd and Liesel Tolson - Secondary Open Teams
• Sofia Johnston - Junior Secondary Open individual
• Sophie Wagner - Intermediate Individual
• Molly Wagner - Pre-Choreographed Secondary Individual

Congratulations to everyone who competed! We look forward to watching our nationals girls in Wellington in November!

​​Basketball - Laura Ring

Wrapping up the season our Senior A team had a tough semi-final, closely losing to Taieri College resulting in a third-place finish. The Junior A team had a good season, finishing in the top half of their grade. All our social teams had fun. I hope they enjoyed their season and are looking forward to next year!

Our Year 7 and 8 mini ball teams had an abrupt end to their seasons due to Covid-19, like all of our teams. However their coaches are pleased with their improvements over the season, with some girls making U13 representative teams. Congratulations to Neve Black and Caitlyn Ring who were selected in the Otago A team and Charlotte Aburn, Ella Colquhoun and Charlotte Watkins who all made the Otago B team. Good luck in October at Regionals!

Curling - Charlotte Hutton-Atkins

Throughout the course of this term, the curling teams have had a good turn out with being able to have enough girls for three novice teams and one experience team. Throughout the season the three novice teams have shown great enthusiasm towards their curling games and really put some of the other teams to the test. For the novice girls overall they did extremely well in the competition, the St Hilda’s ‘Rolling Stones’ ended up placing 3rd as well as the St Hilda’s ‘Curly Curly’ team placing 6th and the St Hilda’s ‘Curly Fries’ coming 8th. From looking at the results you can see that each team has done an outstanding job. 

The experienced team also did an awesome job with the whole competition, having them place 7th. Throughout the season they did a great job at rebuilding their experience, even when they got class losses, they showed amazing integrity to the sport and had good fun.

​​Hockey - Anna McIntyre

Throughout Term 3, and after lockdown there have been some great results from the 8 teams competing in the Secondary School Hockey competition and also two Year 7&8 teams in the Intermediate School Hockey competition. In Div1 St Hilda’s took out first place. In Div2, St Hilda’s Colts were 1st, 2nd was St Hilda’s junior A, 3rd was St Hilda’s 3rd XI. In Div3 St Hilda's Junior B placed 4th and St Hilda's 11's placed 5th. Amazing results from all teams!

Winter quad was played in Christchurch and the 1st XI won hockey, which is an outstanding result. During tournament week the 1st XI was going to play in the Audrey Timlin Memorial cup, which was going to be held in Christchurch. It was cancelled due to Covid-19, but all of the hockey girls got amazing opportunities this year to play some great hockey. All winter hockey players have worked and played so hard this year and will be looking forward to potentially playing some summer hockey.

Football - Grace Cotter

Our football team has had a fun and challenging Term 3. The local competition was a bit topsy turvy this term, with a tight league, resulting in some unlucky losses and some satisfying wins - in which St Hilda’s placed 2nd. Sadly, our end of season tournament was cancelled for the second year in a row, however, the team spirit remained high despite this. We were lucky enough to have played 2 more games on the football turf after lockdown, which everyone has been grateful for. Our highlight from this term was the last game of the season, where we had 6 different goal scorers and beat Kavanagh!

Several of our players have been selected for representative squads this year. Emma Andrew, our goalkeeper, is training with the Southern United Women's squad. This team competes in the NZ National Women's League, so this is an exciting opportunity for her. Hannah Langsbury captained the New Zealand Maori Youth football team, which played against the Cook Islands last school holidays. Freya Des Fountain has been selected for the Dunedin U14 girls football squad. Congratulations to all of these girls!

Netball - Grace Southby

Netball at St Hilda’s in Term 3 has seen our teams continue in strong form, competing in their weekly Saturday competition. For our Senior A team, South Islands have been cancelled unfortunately due to Covid-19. However, our Senior A team was lucky enough to be able to play this year's Quad tournament, hosted by St Margarets. There were some tough games, but they managed wins against Columba and Craighead. They had a close loss to St Margarets - 36-35, meaning we finished 2nd overall in netball. Our Year 9A and 10A teams were lucky to have their South Island tournament in the Term two holidays. Our Year 9 team finished 11th and our Year 10 team finished 6th. Congratulations to all of our netball teams who have competed this year and we look forward to it again next year!

Rugby - Jaymee Meffan

Throughout the second half of the rugby season, the girls continued to build and show determination - even with the very unexpected Covid-19 circumstances. Luckily we were still able to have the opportunity to play in the South Island final. We played a game against Wakatipu High School in Cromwell, which we won convincingly, meaning we then travelled to Invercargill to play Southland Girls. 

This was by far the most physical and toughest team we had come up against throughout the season. They tested our fitness and our resilience. It was a very close and exciting game, with it being almost try for try the whole game - it could have easily gone both ways! The final score was a draw and no extra time was allowed, therefore the official winner was Southland Girls as they were the first team to score. This meant that they then qualified to play Christchurch girls in the final.

Trapshooting - Nicola Post

Trapshooting has had a great term, everyone shot exceptionally well at all the competitions and the results are getting better and better - so that's really motivating for all of us!

In Balfour, Analee shot really well and won High Overall Ladies Single Rise and got second in the Ladies Point Score. St Hilda's got second in the Ladies Team Competition, so that was really awesome and motivating for everyone in the team!

There have been great results at a lot of other competitions and Analee has won lots of great medals. Analee has been a valued member of the team for years and everyone in the team will be really sad to see her leave, but wishes her all the best for University!