On Wednesday 21 March, the annual Aoraki Golf Croquet Championship took place with Timaru Boys’ High School entering five pairs into the B grade competition.

The majority of the ten boys had never played the game before, but with the help of a half hour tutorial, a three minute you tube video, and the experience of James Martin, the teams were in a confident mood.

The competition was split into two draws. Unfortunately as play was about to begin, rain fell meaning that the first four games were restricted to 30 minutes each. After that, games were 40 minutes or longer as in the case of the final rounds.

To their own surprise, and the surprise of many, Reed Stevenson and Ben Hargreaves won all of their pool games, just beating our own top seeds, Alexander Doyle and James Martin, who finished second in the pool winning all of their games except for the one against Reed and Ben. On the other side of the draw, Adam McEwan and Thornton Hellewell finished second in their pool after some nice play from a pair with little experience.

In the finals, Reed and Ben faced the experienced Waitaki Boys’ High School pair who train twice a week and have played together for just over a year. After a slow start, TBHS came back at the WBHS boys but it was too little too late, and Reed and Ben finished second overall.

Overall the results were outstanding from an inexperienced team. Alexander and James finished third overall, with Adam and Thornton coming fourth. The other members of the team, Brett Meyer and Ned Milne finished 7th, and Ben Schikker and Harry Delaney 9th out of the twelve teams. It was great to see so many boys giving a new sport a try and playing with enthusiasm and good sportsmanship.