At 7am on Friday 11th September 52 excited Year 9 and 10 students (2 teams of 8 from Year 10 and 4 teams from Year 9 plus a team combined with Waitaki Boys’ High School) set off for an outdoor adventure in Dunedin.

The Get2Go Challenge is run throughout the country by Hilary Outdoors to encourage a wider participation in outdoor pursuit activities and is a fun and exciting event open to Year 9 and 10 students only.

This year due to being at Level 2 our teams only completed 3 challenges each taking 80 minutes – orienteering at Forrester Park, kayaking at Macandrew Bay and then back across town to Signal Hill for mountain-biking. To maximise their score in each task the teams needed to work together, using important team skills such as communication, problem solving, planning and decision making.

All teams showed amazing team work, effort and resilience to complete all the challenges. Waitaki 5 (Charlotte Lane, Kate Mortimer, Tylee Packer, Mackenzie Shearmon, Sophie Notman, Allie Senior, Emily Neal and Evie Wilson) worked really well together to finish as the first Waitaki all girls team six points ahead of Waitaki 1 (Mya Nicol, Brooke Warden, Jorja Belt, Holly Horn, Renee Stenning, Eden Gilchrist, Emma Fox and Sarah Jamison). These teams were the 3rd and 4th all girls teams on the day.

Again this year we combined with WBHS to make a mixed team. Heather Watt, Georgia Hawkins, Abby Rowland and Amy Perry worked well with their team-mates and finished 5th in their grade which was 7th overall out of 20 teams – a pretty good performance!!

We returned home with grazes and bruises as well as tired muscles – evidence of a fun and challenging event. Well done girls!