Nga Tawa student Eva van den Brink was junior and overall champion at the Solway College Dressage Interschool.
Sports breakfast celebration
The aim of this celebration is to honour and award those students that have shown strong character and commitment, who have had a great attitude, participated in all aspects and contributed strongly. Secondly, it is also to honour our volunteers, coaches and managers which is incredibly important. We had a great morning with around 70 members of our community celebrating one another over a relaxed hot cooked breakfast.
Squash
The highlight of the year was competing in the NZ Secondary Schools Squash Championships, which had 50 teams competing. This was a significant opportunity for our students, each of whom played with increasing skill and confidence. The boys' team finished 31st and the girls' team finished in 7th place. Grace Burnard was selected in February to join the Central Squash Junior squad. Emma Burnard and Sayge Wikohika were members of the winning Ohakune Squash Club D Grade women's team, winning the Central Squash title. Their team then went to the national D Grade women's competition and placed second.
Jayden Bailey won the Ohakune Squash Club men's D grade title, and progressed to become Central Squash men's D grade champion and ultimately the NZ men's D grade champion.
Boys' rugby
This year was the year that could have been for the under-16 rugby team. The team performed strongly throughout the season, however, results did not go our way. We are steadily improving and becoming a stronger team. Our aim is to make the final in the years ahead.
Thank you to all those parents who supported and offered help this year.
Snow Academy
This year we had two groups in the Snow Academy, both were hosted at Turoa. The focus was freestyle skill progression rather than any competitive aspects. This season also saw an exciting progression, with the instructor training programmes available to students. We had some students prove successful and became level 1 ski/snowboarding instructors.
Thanks to the students for still smiling, being on time, upholding the values of ROCK and representing our school.
Girls' rugby
2020 was a tough year. We had only four experienced players in our team and the rest were developing junior girls, with limited knowledge of the rules but big hearts.
The girls showed real resilience, playing games without any subs and coming up against girls much older and bigger than themselves.
Thank you Wayne-Thomas Te Huia for your commitment, inspiration and coaching, instilling in us the passion for team sport and showing us what it takes to be a rugby whānau.
Football
The football programme was greatly affected by the restrictions placed on us. For the first time in 15 years St Bernard's from Lower Hutt did not tour the Central North Island and so that fixture was abandoned. Our juniors had a number of games lined up against local opposition that could not go ahead.
Despite this, a hardcore group of Year 9 and 10 players showed up each Thursday evening throughout term 3. They all worked hard to improve their basic skills and understanding of the game. The weather was often wet, cold and windy, but this did not deter the players from getting out and having a go. Let's hope that next season we are able to play some games and put our training into action.
Waka ama
We had a large number of students interested in waka ama this year and had to cap our crews at two junior under-16 boys' crews, one under-16 girls' crew and one under-19 girls' crew.
The 2020 college waka ama crews had their first taste of racing at a regional regatta hosted by Raukotahi on March 7. This event involved local clubs and secondary college teams. The day also provided novice crews with an insight of the intensity of racing, and gave them an opportunity to respond to an unexpected capsizing, which they reacted to quickly.
We proudly acknowledged the students for their great efforts representing the college and the Waimarino community.
What a whirlwind year this has been. It was during lockdown that the idea of our multisport track was born. The track will be approximately 2km in length and used for walking, running, mountain biking and equestrian. It will benefit everyone at Nga Tawa - theequestrian girls on their horses as well as the sports girls.
The project is well under way and we will be breaking ground on December 12. Our focus this year was "back to basics", so the girls have worked on their core and strength, which is a great building block for their chosen sport as well as prevention of injuries. We did a introductory speed, agility and quickness course and introduced an entire school run on a Monday afternoon, focusing on building the fitness of all our teams.
The sports we have chosen to focus on are swimming, tennis, athletics, volleyball, hockey, netball, cross country, badminton and weightlifting. Our coaches are paramount to the success of our teams so we have begun to introduce top coaches to the school to boost our specific sports.
Netball coach Eliza Graham started at Nga Tawa at the beginning of the netball season and she has taught our girls invaluable lessons. Our junior A netball team won their grade this season and under coach Rose Cruden, our badminton juniors won the Manawatū badminton competition for 2020.
Coached by Kent Horner, our cross country team did exceptionally well in the Whanganui Inter-Schools event, with our senior three-man team Adelaide Roper, Harriet Whitfield and Emma Ferguson winning. Emma Ferguson is fresh to the athletics scene and she is building in confidence and experience on the track. She is extremely talented and hard-working and after only five weeks of competition, she is now ranked 10th on the New Zealand Athletics ranking system.
Our head girl Georgina Bryant has had a busy year and represented Nga Tawa at New Zealand secondary schools triathlon championships, where she placed 11th. She placed third at the North Island secondary schools duathlon championships, and claimed first place at the Kapiti Women's Triathlon and in the U19 grade at the New Zealand aquathlon championships. We are also extremely proud of our representative players Lili Calitz (weightlifting), Jade Larkan (cricket); Kathryn Fleming (rowing); Merenia Feaunati (netball); Elle Thomson (cricket); Jemma Lovewell (cricket) and Abby Ross (tennis).
Other than our students doing well in their respective events, we are proud to announce our new Sports Scholarship programme. The scholarship programme is for new prospective students in Year 11, 12 or 13 who show excellence in their chosen sport.
In term 4 our High Performance Academy was named. This academy is made up of 26 girls who show dedication, talent and passion in their chosen sport. We will be helping the girls manage their time correctly by using an internationally recognised coaching platform called Training Peaks. The mental skills coach and sports psychologist for the Hurricanes, Luke Rowe, will be holding a two-day workshop for the girls and our coaches. We are also currently discussing a nutrition workshop with Rozanne Kruger, who heads up the Dietetics Faculty at Massey University.
Equestrian
We won the Solway College Dressage Interschool. Eva van den Brink was junior and overall champion. Nga Tawa JA and JB Teams placed first and second in the junior section.
Molly Pike has performed consistently this season and is leading the National Show Hunter High Points series on both her pony Oddfella Nga Rua and her horse Zig Zag.
Lilly Carpenter has just stepped up to showjumping at Young Rider Level 1.25-1.40m and placed fifth in her first start at the Wanganui A&P Show.
We have a large contingent of up-and-coming riders who are starting to perform well in their disciplines at their respective levels, so there should be lots of exciting things to come in the future.
