Upper North Island Secondary Schools netball tournament

This year’s UNISS tournament was held in Hamilton where our Premier Netball Team represented our school. Across five days, we played secondary schools from Tauranga, Taupo and Auckland. Each day, we had to play two games which helped us to develop some good recovery habits. On our first day, we won both games putting us in the top half of our grade. This was a positive for the team because it was already an improvement from last year when we came 25th in our grade.

Our fourth day at UNISS was exciting for many of us as both of our games were livestreamed on YouTube. Another exciting aspect of this day was playing against one of our neighbouring schools, Pakuranga College. Unfortunately, we lost this game. This was a loss that was felt by the entire team, but it fueled us to play stronger. Our final day in Hamilton proved to be successful. We had won our first game against Albany which meant that we would compete against Pakuranga College again. The second game against Pakuranga was intense, with the score being tight for the majority of it. Thanks to our determination that was fueled by our loss in the first game, we managed to win 30-27. This was a very significant win for our team, especially for our Year 13s Georgia, Jaime and Yalaina, who represented our school in netball for the last time. This win helped us to secure 13th place in our grade.

Off the court, our team bonded through the week’s highs and lows. Living together allowed us to feel more comfortable around each other resulting in lots of laughs, great memories and strong relationships. UNISS 2023 taught us how to support each other, how to love every member of the team like a sister and that challenges are the key to learning. We are so grateful for this opportunity to play the sport we love and to represent our school while doing so. On behalf of the Sancta Maria Premier Netball Team, I would like to thank Miss Samaeli and Ms. Farmer for organising the week and for looking after us as players and as young women.

• Georgia Cuer, 12DNN

South Eastern Zone Basketball

On Monday 18 September, Sancta Maria College was represented by a boys’ and a girls’ team at the Y7/8 South Eastern Zone Basketball tournament at Pulman Arena.

Both teams put in admirable performances. Our girls’ team narrowly missed out on making the semi-finals and our boys’ team went through the tournament undefeated, taking out first place. They will now progress to the AAIMS Auckland Championships. Congratulations!

AIMS Games Success

Congratulations to all our students who participated in this year’s AIMS Games tournament held in Tauranga.  We had 50 Year 7&8 students representing Sancta Maria College at this year’s event and we entered four team codes: boys’ basketball, boys’ football, girls’ football and girls’ netball.

Congratulations to our basketball boys who placed 21st out of 93 teams, finishing in the top quarter of their competition.

Well done also to our netball girls for qualifying to play in the A Grade out of 144 teams.

In addition to our four teams, we also had four individual athletes participating throughout the week. Toby Stewart competed in golf, while at the badminton courts we were represented by Noah Joseph, Olivia Joseph and Kaeden Wong.  A special congratulations to Noah and Olivia who took home bronze in the badminton mixed doubles – an outstanding achievement!

Thank you to all our students who trained hard, played well and represented the school with pride.