Rob’s Blog - November 2021
It has been a somewhat disrupted second half of the year but there have still been a number of events that proceeded sine my last report …..
Old Boys Events
Annual General Meeting
This was held in August with Ben Rickard re-elected as President and most of the rest of the Committee offering to continue their sterling work. The one significant change was that Alan Neilson stood down as Treasurer after more than a decade of service. He remains on the Committee which now includes Morgan Lloyd as the new Treasurer.
Annual Dinner
The decision to cancel the dinner was made early on with the uncertainty of Covid 19 making that a logical one. For those who are Tauranga based we have organised End of Year drinks at The Hop House on Friday, November 26th from 5.30 p.m. so get your mates together and come along for a drink and some finger food on your Association.
Wellington Function
This has been a regular fixture on the calendar for 11 years now and I look forward to catching up with Wellington Old Boys in that first week of December again. The venue, as always, is the Blend Bar on Wakefield Street – near the bottom of Cuba Street – with start time from 5.30 p.m. on Tuesday, December 7th. The first drink and finger food will be on the Association so come along for a catch up !!!
TBC Prizegiving
For the first time in my 40 years at TBC this year’s Senior Academic Prizegiving was split between a Year 13 and Year 11/12 events. The Year 13 awards included ….
Reece Talopau Top Science scholar and Dux – the first Pasifika student attain this award.
Lucas Cowley Proxime Accessit – son of Old Boy Drew Cowley
Hayden Collier Top Commerce Scholar
Max Irving Top Arts Scholar
Jordan Toy Monte Ohia Trophy for the Best Year 13 Maori Boy
A special mention should go to Year 12 student Logan McDonald who leaves to go to Auckland University to further his studies in Mathematics. Logan gained 3 A+ passes in University Calculus, Statistics and Mathematics this year and is certainly going to be one to watch in the years’ ahead.
Sports Awards
Covid again restricted our glamour sporting occasion but we still completed the formalities albeit in house. Our major winners this year were …..
Hemi Tulemau – Student Official of the Year
Gus Shivnan - Best All Rounder – NZ Surf Lifesaving Youth Squad, NZ Age Group Swim Squad, NZ Waterpolo Squad, TBC Volleyball Senior A.
Jordan Toy – Pergo et Perago Award – Tauranga City football, NZSS & NZ Under 20 football squads Deputy Head Boy + working towards Level 3 Excellence.
Joe Smythe – Best Performance by an Individual – NZSS Squash team, NZ Junior World Under 19 team & 2nd in NZ Junior open
1st XI Football & Basketball Premier team - Team of the Year – both sides won Super 8 and between them lost only one match in interschools but were denied the chance of becoming National Champions by Covid !!
Jordan Toy - Sportsman of the Year – Football + 100m. & 200m. champion
Arts Awards
Top awards presented at Arts awards this year went to the following …
Ethaniel Nogaj - Excellence in Dramatic Arts
Nathan Coburn – Excellence in Performing Arts
Taiwhakaea Togo-Hawkins - Excellence in Cultural Arts
2022 Prefects
It is usual practice to appoint a group of Year 12 students as Prefects at this time of year with our Head students for 2022 coming from this group.
Appointed are : Darcy Bassett, Te Kirikau Blake, Hamish Graham, Binew Illangamudalige, Taine Larsen, Toby McGuffie, Sam Penny, Micah Pugh, Gus Shivnan, Matthew Stewart, Hemi Tulemau, Jacques Van Rensvelt and Robert Veale.
TBC Sport
Cricket
Master in Charge Regan Cross took a group of Year 9 players to the Hawkes Bay for a tournament at Labour Weekend. It was a good learning experience for our young lads who were beaten by a Taradale HS Year 10 side and also a Wellington/Hutt Valley Year 10 group. The high point of the weekend was an exciting 1 wicket win over the Wellington Year 9 side.
The Junior Representative side has just completed the local playoffs for the NZCT Cup with wins over Katikati, Papamoa and Mount Maunganui Colleges. They will now contest a ND playoff series to determine who will represent the region at nationals.
Underwater Hockey
Four TBC lads in Carter Ormsby, Ben Havenga, Corban Drury-Martin and Jake Corney were part of the Tauranga club team that contested the National Club tournament.
Hockey
NZ and Oceania Hockey have sent nominations to FIH (the International Hockey Federation) for their Youth Leadership Awards which recognise the efforts of 14-19 year old players worldwide. Four of our students were recognised as recipients of a Certificate and invitation to join a Global Youth panel as well as be eligible to represent New Zealand at a Global Youth Festival. The students were :
Hamish Graham Umpiring & Volunteering for Events
Jono Smalberger Leadership in Delivery of Funsticks Hockey
Micah Pugh Team Leadership
Aiden Bax Umpiring
Our Under 15 representative side, which contested the Division 1 in the local competition against the 2nd Xis from other schools had a very successful season. The side scored 67 goals across the season and only had 1 scored against them.
BOP Sports Awards
Two TBC teams have been nominated for the Team of the Year award at this event. They are the Senior Futsal team and our Senior squash team both of which won their respective national titles.
E-Sports
NZ High School Esports Nationals were held recently & TBC finished with 3rd and 4th place nationally. We also had 3 other teams place in the top 16 with 198 teams involved nationwide. The teams involved were :
TBC Grand Plats - 3rd Place Nationals
James Paprzik, Josh Leighton, Jake Rutherford.
TBC Aimware - 4th Place Nationals
Cory Bates, Aaron Keene, Jack Gillux, Liam Peddle
TBC in the News
Young Innovators Awards
Year 12 student Michael Ren has been named Senior Supreme winner in this competition with his web-based data visualisation tool that converts grades into easy to understand graphs. Michael moved to New Zealand from China in 2015 and developed the app to help parents understand how their children’s learning was progressing. There were 417 entries all told and Michael also took out the $2000 prize for Creativity and an internship with local tech company Cucumber.
Otago University Ambition Programme
Pasifika student Cooper Filipo has gained the opportunity to participate in this programme with an all-expenses paid trip to Dunedin for this 3 day event.
Foodbank Appeal
TBC’s annual Foodbank appeal is held as part of the Interhouse competition at the school and looks to fulfil a significant need in our community. The focus this year was to provide canned fish, bars of soap and soup and all told there were 7,350 of these items boxed up and sent off to the Foodbank. A great result in these difficult times.
Old Boys Sports
Sailing
TBC has another World Champion with Tom Saunders winning the World Laser Sailing championships held in Barcelona. Tom becomes just the second Kiwi to win the world’s since these championships began in 1974.
Rugby
One of our All Black Old Boys in Greg Rowlands passed away in Tauranga a few months back. Greg’s contributions to Bay of Plenty rugby were legendary playing 161 matches for the province between 1969 and 1981 holding the record for most points with 1008 points. His performances were recognised in 1976 when he was selected for the All Blacks in their tour to Argentina.
Tauranga Sports won the Local Premier rugby competition this year and there were a good number of Old Boys who were part of that victory. Curtis Palmer and Lucas Cashmore (Blair’s son) from last year’s 1st XV as well as Leroy Carter, Josh Honey, Connor Fifita, Jayreeve Mose and Peni Lasaqa.
The BOP Steamers team of 2021 included a good number of Old Boys including several debutants. Leroy Carter was named as captain with others returning including Aidan Ross, Nathan Harris, Jeff Thwaites, and Peni Lasaqa. Lucas Cashmore, Josh Bartlett and Veveni Lasaqa were all in the 1st XV in 2020 but made their full representative debuts through the season.
All Black captain Sam Cane did not feature for the Steamers this season but came back from injury to get a little game time with King Country in the Heartland championship before joining the All Blacks on their northern tour.
Cricket
Kane Williamson has led the Black Caps to another World Cricket final in the T20 World Cup in the Middle East. Ultimate success was not ours but again the Black Caps were able to produce a great brand of cricket of winning against the world heavyweights in India and England. Australia were comfortable winners in the final but to have been in the ODI, Test & T20 finals in the last 2 years is a feat that Kane and his team can be incredibly proud of.
The 2021/22 first class season has begun with Covid restrictions delaying Northern Districts season start. The team for the first match is captained by Old Boy Joe Carter with Bharat Popli and Brett Hampton also featuring in the side.
Old Boys in the News
Education
Shane Cunliffe begins a new chapter in his life in education next year as the Principal of the new primary school in Papamoa Te Manawa o Papamoa in 2022. Shane and a small group of staff have been developing the curriculum for the school through the year and last month was to appoint 8 more staff.
Art
Graham Hoete (aka Mr G) has been commissioned to complete a portrait of trailblazing Maori filmmaker Merata Mita in Rotorua. The work in Eruera Street will be 5-6 stories high and celebrates the Aronui Indigenous Arts Festival.
Charity Work
A decade of hard work by Bryce Dineen has paid off with the launch of the 18 metre catamaran Wish for Fish. Bryce suffered a spinal injury in 2007 and in 2011 began his Wish for Fish foundation which aimed to raise $2 ½ million to build the vessel. The purpose-built craft will give access to a million New Zealanders who have a disability or illness to go fishing. It has the capacity to take 25 people at a time and will be available for people nationwide.
Business of the Year
Tauranga-based legal tech start-up LawVu has won the Business of the Year Award. Old Boy Tim Boyne and business partner Sam Kidd have developed a cloud-based software platform for in-house legal teams creating contracts, collaboration and document sharing.
As always, if there is any information I can include in future newsletters, please get in touch with me on r.leslie@tbc.school.nz
