Following on from the regular sporting season, a number of our top teams headed to venues throughout the country for the first Winter Tournament Week in three years following COVID disruption. Sport Activator Chris Campbell, who normally authors this, has also headed away with the NZ U16 Football side, who are playing in Australia (spot him in the photos). The first team to mention though are our Smallbore rifle team who have shot to success.

Smallbore rifle 

Congratulations to Finn Darrall, Cody Jacques, Dominic Hare, Thomas Hare and Cory Coombes, who were competing in the Wellington & Hutt Valley secondary schools Smallbore Teams Event over the last few weeks. 

At the end of all rounds, our team has come out on top, with Finn Darrall also taking the honours of Top Shooter.

A great effort from our guys.

Girls' 1st XI Football

The Girls 1st XI were fortunate enough to spend their Tournament Week in sunny Marlborough competing at the Gary Sowden Tournament, expertly hosted by Marlborough Football at A&P Park in Blenheim. 

The week was jam packed with individual and team highlights as you will see from their results below. 

Unfortunately we narrowly missed out in making the semi finals so could only finish as high as 5th place. Credit to our girls though, they were committed to finishing as high as possible. 

To claim 5th spot the girls would have to perform the upset of their season and knock over fellow Wellingtonians, Scots College, who play their weekly football two divisions above us and boast NZ age grade players. Our girls played the game of their lives and an individual Taylor Cooper goal in the later stages of the game was enough to win the match and a well deserved 5th place. 

At the prizegiving Lily Candy was well deserving of our team's Most Valuable Player. As our goal keeper Lily only conceded three goals in six games and was our hero in the penalty shoot out against Whanganui High School. 

Another proud moment for the players, staff and supporters was Upper Hutt College getting named the Fairest Team at the tournament (voted for by opposition coaches and managers).

The Tournament was a great way to send off our two Year 13's Elsie Kepakali and Sahya Ward. Thank you both for the contribution that you have made to girls' football at our school and all the best for your future in the sport. 

Thank you as well to Jason and Michelle McHenry who gave up a week to run around after the girls and make sure all they had to worry about was playing football. All your effort was much appreciated.

Our Results

• Loss v Marlborough Girls 0-2 
• Win v Villa Maria 1-0 
• Win v Ashburton 1-0 
• Loss v Rangi Ruru 0-1 
• Win v Wanganui High School 3-2 (on penalties)
• Win v Scots College 1-0 

Boys' 1st XI Football

The Boys' 1st XI have shown plenty of promise for the future at their satellite tournament in New Plymouth. 

Eventually finishing 12th, the boys could have easily finished well up the ladder after great performances versus Francis Douglas College and Hamilton Boys' High School.
Unfortunately, a poor pool result versus Otorohanga High School meant the team was consigned to the bottom half of the draw. 

Top goal scorer for the tournament was James Hill, while goal of the tournament went to Year 9 student Flynn Mihaljevich-Groves who completed a left foot chip off the keeper from a tight angle in our first match versus Francis Douglas.

Senior Boys' basketball

After a strong season in the Premier One Division, the boys' basketball team headed to Zone 3 Regionals in Wellington with the hopes of testing and proving themselves once again.

We came out the gate strongly with a win over Hutt International Boys School 94-59. This was the first time all season the boys had managed to get a win against this team, and to do so with such a dominant performance was a great way to start the Tournament. 

The boys went on to a strong-hearted and well-played game vs St Johns, which slipped away from us in the last 10 seconds, losing by one point.

Day two saw us play two local powerhouses, Wellington College and Scots College. We gave our best effort hitting 17 three's in the first game against Wellington College and went neck and neck with Scots College. Unfortunately, the results did not go our way. That took us to the second bracket, where the boys showed a lot of class. Only one loss from this point onwards saw us place 11th out of 32 teams.

This Tournament was a great way to see off Hunter Baumber, Jordyn Hemi-Bedford, Chout Chout, Abel Clarke, Conrad Work and Jayden Barrett. We thank them for all the years of sprints and layups that they have given to our programme.