TGC’s Canoe Slalom team left Tauranga on the 31st of September to travel down to Kawerau for the annual New Zealand Canoe Slalom Secondary Schools Tournament.

With COVID-19 putting a hasty halt to the competition earlier in the year, our ākonga were excited and ready to put on a show. The five-day-long event consisted of higher and quicker flows on the Tarawera river, with the weather delivering nasty downfall and muddy environments for paddlers to endure. Despite the dreadful weather, it was nothing short of what our team is used to kayaking in.

Competing on fast-flowing white water in a high-intensity atmosphere, Canoe Slalom is far from your average sit-on-top kayaking. This year our school had a team of five strong paddlers who competed in a multitude of events; all of which required completely different sets of skills, techniques and boats. Our ākonga have been in the sport for between 2-7 years, learning, practising and mastering techniques required to make it down courses with up to 23 gates. Kayakers have to know how to read rapids, manoeuvre the constantly changing, fast flowing river, and complete the race with little or no touches and misses, all while going as quickly as possible. Success in this sport doesn’t come easy, yet our kayakers came through with astounding results for our kura.

Sixteen different schools and 61 paddlers from across the country travelled to compete on the Tarawera river. Our ākonga went up against teams nearly twice as big as their own, yet still came out on top, bringing back a whopping 31 medals and multiple cups.

These cups include that of the Top Girls College Kayaking Team in NZ and the Top Small School Kayaking Team in NZ. But that’s not all they brought back. Breaking the trend of “TBC domination”, our girls shattered the 11-year running winning streak of the Overall Best Kayaking School Team in New Zealand that Tauranga Boys’ College had tried ever so hard to hold onto. Ka pai to our kayakers - the best team in New Zealand!

Our team’s individual results are listed below:

Kate Hawthorne - Year 13 team captain

C2 mixed U18 - Gold

C2 women’s U18 - Gold

C2 mixed team U18 - Gold

C1 women’s U18 Team - Gold

K1 U18 Team - Gold

C1 women's U18 - Silver

K1 women’s U18 Silver

Jess Cotterill - Year 13

C2 women’s U18 - Gold

C2 mixed team U18 - Gold

C1 women’s U18 team - Gold

K1 U18 Team - Gold

C2 mixed V18 - Silver

Tess Pateman - Year 11

C1 women’s U16 - Gold

C2 women’s U16 - Gold

C2 mixed U16 - Gold

K1 women’s U16 - gold

C1 women’s U18 team - gold

K1 U18 team - Gold

DR sprint U16 - Gold

Extreme - 4th

Kiarni Sperling - Year 11

C2 women’s U16 - Silver

C2 mixed U18 - Silver

C1 women’s U16 - Bronze

C2 mixed U16 - Bronze

DR sprint U16 - Bronze

K1 women’s U16 - Bronze

C1 U16 team - Bronze

Rosie Rex - Year 9

C1 women’s U14 - Gold

C2 women’s U16 - Gold

K1 women’s U14 - Gold

C2 mixed U16 - Silver

DR sprint U14 - Silver