Kāpiti College sports facilities get major boost with transformation of old gym

Inside the renovated gym. Photo / David Haxton

An original Kāpiti College gym that had seen better days has had a stunning makeover.

The Ministry of Education has largely funded the $2.2 million transformation with Multibuild in charge of construction.

The new gym features a junior-sized court for sports like basketball, handball, netball, volleyball and badminton, as well as a weights room, cardio room, changing rooms and more.

Called Tōpūtanga, which means unity, it complements the college’s large Sport and Recreation Centre.

“It’s a nice light airy space and I think it works well,” principal Tony Kane said.

“The students’ reaction has been ‘wow’ because they had been used to the slightly scungy old space.”

Head of physical education and health Kate Thompson praised students who had coped “remarkably well” for three terms of the year with one gym.

“We have four PE classes at a time and had classes outside for most of the year.

“The students have been cool and haven’t moaned once.”

Thompson was rapt that the weights room was made larger than originally planned, and that the college’s board of trustees had backed a proposal to kit it out with $100,000 worth of new gear.

“We wanted to put together a functional space that would meet the needs of all our students.”

The college was in the process of providing a swipe-card system for student use of the weights room and eventually developing wider community use.

“We want to set up a really good culture about how we look after this brand-new facility so the longevity is there for the years to come,” she said.

Part of the weights room. Photo / David Haxton

PE teacher Robbie Hutchinson said the college was “now one of the most well-resourced schools facility-wise” and there was “a lot of excitement” about providing a wider range of physical education course assignments going forward.

The original gym dated back to 1960 and “as was the case for schools at the time, a pretty small space,” Kane reflected.

“Those spaces were only about 24m long by 12m wide, and the problem with that is you couldn’t run a regular basketball game on them.”

By 1992, as a Ministry of Education project, the college had grown enough for another gym.

“But the problem was, back then, there wasn’t enough money to build the full gym so they built two-thirds of it, and then it all stopped and nothing else happened,” he said.

When the centre was completed in 2010, the original gym was walled off to provide dance and film studios.

With the completion of the Te Raukura ki Kāpiti performing arts centre, in 2020, attention turned to transforming the space into Tōpūtanga.

Kāpiti College's physical education team Matt Gillan (back left), Leon Horsley, Clayton Schimanski, Robbie Hutchinson, Kate Thompson, Kairo Wise (front left), Ben Lampitt, Harry Kerr, Emily McMillian.

“We’ve sorted it out by kind of coming back the other way and demolishing a chunk of the old gym and making it into a facility where you can play any sport you like,” Kane said.

One of the features of Tōpūtanga is about 24 solar tube lights.

“A lot of gyms are gloomy spaces during the day so we wanted to bring some light in and make it a nice space,” Kane said.

“When you’re in there during the day it looks like all the lights are on.”

The new gym will take pressure off the centre, both for school team practices and games, but also for community groups who hire the facilities after 7pm or on weekends.

Tōpūtanga, which still has a few finishing touches to complete, was blessed by Paora Trim, who is the college’s head of Māori, during a recent ceremony.

Thompson said lots of people had been involved in the project but gave special mention to one person.

“None of this would have happened without Tony Kane.”