College Sport: National title success

Bethlehem College
The past week has been successful for Bethlehem College as we celebrate a national title success.
Katie Smith had a great race at the multisport championship. She completed the 4km kayak, 15km mountain bike and 6km trail run in only 2 hours 1 minute to win the New Zealand secondary schools junior title.
Netballers Courtney Rennie and Molly Anning were named in the under-15 Bay of Plenty squad and Sophie TeWhaiti and Paula Muller were selected for the under-15 Bay development rep team.
Both the BC Year 8 A netball team and Year 5 Stings have were successful last week, competing in the Year 8 and Year 5 section of the Harbourside tournament and both taking out first place.
In hockey, the BC boys' 2nd XI played the Tauranga Boys Colts. From the beginning, the boys were struggling. Some team members were not able to play and so a desperate call had to be made to players from the 3rd XI. Masa Kurihara and Hamish Dallas answered the call and drew their hockey sticks for the game.
The game began but Tauranga Boys soon scored. However, the boys were undeterred, stayed positive and the goals began to flow. William Burnett chalked up two goals and Andrew Fraser- MacKenzie scored two of his own. By the the game had finished, BC had four goals while the opposition had one, giving the BC boys' 2nd XI their first win of the season. - Hannah Marshall and Mat Smalberger, sports captains.
Aquinas College
Aquinas has doubled its number of netballers selected to play at representative level this year.
The College has three girls in the Bay of Plenty under-17 development team - Charlotte Curach, Courtney Wilson and Alice McFall. Lauren Dennehy has been selected for the under-15 Gold team while the College also has eight players in development teams - Amber Cook, Melissa Powell, Alex Baskin, Charlotte Skelton, Alice Thompson, Courtney McManaway, Morgan Schuler, and Ellie McManaway.
In the Harbourside Netball Centre representative teams are Saffron McLarnon (under-15), Taylah Stack and Dana Welten (Year 8) and Emma Abbot (Year 7).
Congratulations to the Aquinas College 8A netball team who won the Office Max coaching session with Waikato Bay of Plenty Magic player Julianna Naoupu.
Otumoetai CollegeOn a wet Queen's Birthday weekend, Otumoetai College's rugby 1st XV showed Bethlehem College 1st XV how to play running rugby, winning 20-5.
The forwards set the platform with Kurt Christophersen and Tukuora Ngawhika particularly damaging. Adam Braddock and Kingston York worked well and helped set a dominant platform.
Billy Carter was strong at halfback and the backs made good use of Keegan Long's kicking, pinning Bethlehem inside their own half. The team effort has now set Otumoetai College 1st XV on a path that could see them promoted to division one with only two games left in the first round.
Otumoetai College
2nd XV were too strong for Bethlehem's seconds, winning 26-5. Isaac Mathewson showed his ability as a forward and was tenacious on defence. Daniel Rodirequez, in his first season, has improved consistently and Andre Williams was the pick of the backs with good decision making and classy attacking.
The under-15 rugby team travelled to Trident College in Whakatane. In difficult conditions the team had a narrow halftime lead of just 12-5. The team showed it had a better level of commitment in the second half and stuck to their strengths to win 26-13. Nathan MacDonald had a good game, scoring two tries.
In the under-14 game, Otumoetai College went to Tauhara College in Taupo, winning 24-14.
Our Prem One netball team won against Te Puke 33-29 with a thrilling fourth quarter dominance of 13-1. Julia Hartley and Alex Gardner stood out.
Basketballer Derone Ruakawa also had a standout performance at the under-19 nationals held in Tauranga over the weekend. Scoring a massive 54 points in one game, Derone was rewarded with selection into the tournament team at this high level.
Congratulations to Te Pae Aporo and Katie Wood who have been selected into the NZ under-17 team to tour Adelaide in July.
Katikati College
Netballers, Grace Diggelmann and Anahera Mohi, have both been selected for their respective age group Bay of Plenty representative teams.
In indoor cricket, Brody Gilroy, played for the Bay of Plenty open men's team at the weekend in the Northern Districts/Auckland championships.
He was by far the youngest member of the team at just 14. His father, Steve Gilroy was also in the team and is a staff member here at Katikati College. The Bay had a successful tournament, knocked out by one run in an exciting semifinal to finish third. Brody is trialling for the Northern Districts under-16 team this coming weekend. Good luck to him.
In football our 15th grade Rebels side had an awesome 9-0 win over Papamoa Scorpions, who were no match for the Rebels. They have now won four our of four games. There was great play by Luke Gentil in his new position in defence, he was player of the day with a lot of headers and control of the ball. Some great goals from Jonah Britton, Matt Melligan and Mark Brunning gave Katikati an edge and good runs from Jason Palmer and Dylan Morris contributed to the win.
Our Katikati girls' 1st XI played unbeaten Tauranga Girls' College on Saturday. Katikati started strong and were rewarded with Ana Morris scoring off a penalty in the first half. Unfortunately the girls couldn't keep the lead and Tauranga scored shortly after halftime for a final score of 1-1.
Our 1st XI boys lost to Otumoetai 7-0 and the 2nd XI lost to Whakatane 6-0.
Te Puke High
Te Puke High played Bethlehem College 2nd XI at Blake Park on Tuesday evening. Te Puke had the majority of possession and field advantage throughout the first half and managed to convert the pressure into a goal.
Bethlehem came out with a vengeance in the second half and scored from a penalty corner. Quick and accurate passing from the back through to the forwards created the perfect opportunity for James Bristow to score the goal to put Te Puke ahead.
High work rate by the forwards and back up by Shan Heal in particular created excellent opportunities up front and kept the opposition out in the last 10 minutes. Final score 2-1 to Te Puke.
Boys' football: Our first XI showed their mastery of wet playing conditions in their Baywide Youth League premier division fixture against the Bethlehem College 1st XI on Saturday. In a key change to his starting line-up, coach Matthew Park showed confidence in his central defensive pairing by pushing defensive leader Brendon Taylor forward into the midfield.
Conceding an early goal only served to motivate the Te Puke players, soon levelling the scores through applying pressure to the Bethlehem defence to concede an own goal from a corner kick. Although by halftime the scores were again level at two goals apiece, in his half-time talk Te Puke's coach refocused the players as to where on the pitch he wanted pressure applied, with the players responding immediately on the resumption to score two goals in quick succession.
Defending was always going to be challenging as heavy showers of rain swept across the ground, with Te Puke scoring a further three times and Bethlehem scoring twice more as they endeavoured to get back into the match.
Te Puke central defender Adam Partridge played his best game of the season, breaking down opposition attacks through physical commitment and good movement despite the deteriorating ground conditions. Although goalkeeper Carl Edwards carried an injury throughout the match he outplayed his Bethlehem counterpart and this was a key factor to the outcome.
Zac Morison scored a hat-trick of goals as the final result went the way of Te Puke 7-4.
Tauranga Girls'
The Tauranga Girls College underwater hockey teams had awesome results at the Upper North Island secondary schools tournament from June 3-6.
The Senior A team won a silver medal and the Junior A team won bronze - a huge achievement for Tauranga Girls with both teams now qualifying for nationals. Six students have been named in New Zealand volleyball teams. Alice Bain, Simone Te Kani and Sage Hemara are members of the under-17 team travelling to Adelaide on July 8 until the 21st. Stephanie Pierce, Andrea Tauai and Toni Bullock will be travelling to Arizona, United States, on July 21 in the New Zealand junior women's team.
Michelle Prendiville, Lauren Clark and Emily McGee competed in the Bay of Plenty secondary schools squash tournament, with Lauren gaining first overall in division 2. Michelle won two of her games.
Many of our school's basketball team members are also in rep teams. Te Hiria Bennett, Laura Kuka, Kelly-Marie Turei and Chelsea McQueen play for the Tauranga City under-19s and Makayla Daysh, Ngatai Bennett and Timini Kingi are in the under-17s. Rebecca Hughes and Moana Whare are involved with the under-15 team.
Friday night saw fine weather, although there were huge amounts of wind. Aside from this, the League One netball team played Mount College, beating them 37-26. Junior A beat Otumoetai Junior A 37-23 and 9A had a win against Otumoetai Junior B 27-22.
Also the first football team played Rotorua United in a convincing 8-0 win. Congratulations to our Junior A team which, playing up a division, drew 1-1 with Katikati College 1st XI. - Zoe Wieringa.
Mount College
The national schools multisport champs last weekend in a very damp Rotorua were part of the 3D multisport festival. The multisport race division was over a 25km course consisting of a 4km paddle, 15km mountainbike and 6km run. Sam Durrant finished fifth in the under-19 division and Campbell Reid was 7th in the under-15s.
Mount Joggers' annual 21km and 10km run was held on Sunday and Tim Neate, a Year 12 student, was first male in the 10km run in a blistering time of 38.46. Ben Cochrane was fifth in 40.49, Grayson Straker sixth in 40.53 and Michael Bryant 14th in 44.20 from a field of 219 open men. In the 21km, Joel Widmer finished in an impressive 1.40.45, 43rd from 214 runners.
Several of our rugby league students have been successful in making the Coastline rep teams - Elias Greaves Borell, Ben Kendall, Liam Farrell and Shadow Taite (under-17) and Vinnie Gardiner-Tahana and Max Lagafaoa (under-15).
The final trial for the under-17 New Zealand girl's volleyball team was held in Christchurch over Queens Birthday weekend and Claudia Colenso Neenee was named as non-travelling reserve for the upcoming trip to Australia, a great effort from a 15-year-old still eligible in this agegroup next year.
The Mauao under-15 boys' rugby team deserves a special mention after finishing their grading rounds undefeated to qualify through to the premiership round.
Last week's game against Tauranga Boys' College under-14 elite was a great display of teamwork as the forwards and backs combined well together.
Tauranga Boys' were competitive at the breakdown and tackled well but we outplayed them in every area of the game and outscored them eight tries to one.
There was far better commitment at the ruck and maul this week and this provided good clean ball to the backs.
The MMC 1 netball team had a top-of-the-table clash against Tauranga Girls' College, losing by 11 goals. The wind was testing with the ball having its own agenda in many of the plays. MMC play Aquinas 1 on Friday.
MMC Tuis had a good win 29-16 against Otumoetai Prem Res 1.