Area Schools Tournament

Some of our students are away at Tournament this week, so today we took the rest of the secondary school across to Westport to support their schoolmates. This morning the boys competed in basketball and the girls in volleyball - this afternoon they swapped sports and all played another set of games.

At the same time some of the students whipped out to particpate in the swimming and squash challenges too. I had intended to blip an 'action' shot from one of the courts (which I have plenty of) but when going through my photos I couldn't go past this one. To me it epitomises the pure enjoyment that many of the students gain from tournament. Each team of 4 swimmers had to carry one of their team-mates as far up the pool as possible without getting them wet - it got harder the further they went towards the deep end! Here our group are practising in order to work out the 'best' way to carry K. But K was laughing so hard he wasn't making it easy!

The kids are all amazing. We send 20 kids and they all particpate fully - yesterday it was touch rugby, softball (baseball), art and tech challenge, wearable art. Today it is basketball, volleyball, squash and swimming. Tomorrow it is rugby, netball, soccer, golf, cooking challenge, various other activities and then they finish off with a dance tomorrow night attended by the teams from all 7 schools.

The kids arrive home on Friday, absolutely shattered and almost asleep on their feet - but it still takes a week to wipe the smiles off their faces.