Sports Camp a Highlight

Last week, 19 of our students traveled to Totara Springs to participate in the annual Town & Country Sports Camp. Our team, made up of students from Hamilton SDA School and Matamata Christian School, joined together to make up the Combined team.

We were extremely blessed with sunny weather all week, a relief from the heavy rain that set in last year. Our team hit the ground running, participating in Athletics, followed by Pickleball, Swimming, Shooting, & Archery.

Our Pickleball team made a strong start and easily made it to the Semi-finals. After winning their semi-final, they played an entertaining Final that saw the lead swing back and forth before their opponents snatched the win, earning our team runner-up with the narrowest of margins.

On Monday evening, our team participated in Scramball, a very chaotic game that sees competitors scrambling for balls that enter their quadrant and firing them into other teams quadrants, with the aim of having the least balls in their area when time is up. After 4 rounds of Scramball, our Combined team ended-up earning 3rd Place against the 10 other teams. Click Here for Monday's highlights.

Both Tuesday and Wednesday are the most demanding at Sports Camp. Our team plays 7 rounds of 20 minute games in a range of sports and against various opposition in the morning, following by another 8 rounds between lunch and dinner. On Tuesday evening, we played Indoor Hockey, Chess, Draughts, Darts, and Cage Soccer. Our Draughts player a won first place overall, winning our Combined team their first trophy for this year. Click Here for Tuesday's highlights.

On Wednesday evening, we played Indoor Soccer, Bowls, and Table Tennis. Our girls Table Tennis team breezed through their game, winning our second trophy with relative ease. Our boys Table Tennis team also earned 3rd place overall, and both our boys and girls Indoor Soccer teams were eliminated in the semi-finals of the competition. Click Here for Wednesday's highlights.

Despite winning and drawing a game, our Softball team just missed out on progressing to the Semi-finals. Our Netball, Volleyball, Wallball, and Pétanque teams all earned enough points to progress to the Semi-finals round that took place on Thursday.

Thursday is always a welcome change in pace, compared to the previous two days. In the morning, all of our Semi-finals teams were successful in booking a spot in the Final. At lunchtime, we learned that three of our four Finals would take place against Paeroa, the team that won first place overall at Sports Camp last year. In our Wallball final against Paeroa, our opponents took an early lead and were 7 points ahead at the halfway mark. Our Combined team closed the gap and soon overtook Paeroa to win with the smallest of margins. We played our Netball finals next, also against Paeroa. Our team had a strong start and by halftime, held a lead that Paeroa weren't able to overcome.

In the Pétanque final against Pirongia, our opponents won the first two rounds and despite our team winning the next round, we weren't able to better their score, finishing as runner-up.

We spent the last part of Thursday afternoon practicing our Cheer. Preparing our Cheer is always a geographical challenge for our team, due to the distance between our schools, giving us a significant disadvantage compared to other teams. Every spare moment throughout the week is spent practicing and finalising our routine. To have won it twice over the last two years is quite remarkable, and our team were determined to make it three in a row.

After dinner, faces painted and hair tied up, our team were ready to take centre stage. Our Combined team were the 7th team to perform on the evening, and presented their Cheer with great energy and enthusiasm, much to the delight of the audience and parents that had come along to support. Click HERE to view the Cheer.

After the Cheer, there was a nervous wait for the Basketball Finals to end, as our Girls Volleyball team went through their final preparations for their Final against Paeroa, AGAIN! The girls started well, however, nerves set-in and Paeroa were leading 20-13 at half time. Our team quickly settled and closed the gap to a few points as the end of the game neared. Paeroa had a significant advantage with a 38-35 point lead, only needing two more points to win. Our Combined team won back the serve and it was a very tense few minutes, as we drew level with them. We only needed two more good serves to land in our favour and our server, taking a deep breath to calm her nerves and hit the ball. The girls erupted with shouts and screams of delight as Paeroa failed to return the second serve, resulting in our Girls team winning the Volleyball finals for the first time, after coming close in 2016.

On Friday morning, during Prize-giving, we learned that we had won the Cheer for the third year in a row, the first team to ever do that at Sports Camp. We also achieved 2nd Place in Shooting and Sportsmanship, and Third Place in Mini Golf, Quality Living, and Scramball.

After a very demanding week, our Combined team finished in 4th Place overall, our best result at a Sports Camp. Well done team! We would also like to acknowledge Holly Odgers for the work she put in to preparing and teaching our Cheer.

There were a tired lot of kids and adults that arrived back at school after Sports Camp, exhausted but buzzing from the experience and eagerly anticipating doing it all again next year.