Volleyball!

Earlier this year I guess you could say I went through a bit of a volleyball craze. The volleyball season is only 6 weeks long, but it's pretty full on. We had two big tournaments and a bunch of regional games, and I loved every bit of it! 

I only started playing competitively last year, when the coach approached me in the hall after math class and said they could use me due to my height haha. They taught me how to block, run C's and middles and A-deads but I didn't actually get much playing time until this year after a summer of practice with Oak in our backyard.

Our team had a record season for NPBHS this year, where volleyball has traditionally never been that big. We came second in the Super 8 tournament with the other North Island boy's schools, and made it into Div 1 (top 16) at the national tournament. Because of this, 5 of our senior boys received volleyball tiger jackets :D

Noah's ARC

Our first actual adventure race of the season, the ARC! (Adventure Racing Coromandel) For this race, all the adventure racers from New Plymouth split to make 3 even teams to give everyone more experience for the bigger races coming up. I was captain of our team, which included (from left to right) me, Bronwyn, Hannah and George.

George's dad is pretty much a pro photographer, so most of the pictures in this post are from him.

My ARC this year went pretty much like this:

Friday night:

Check in and race briefing

receive maps

plan route and final packing

Studying the maps and planning a route

sleep

Saturday:

Race kicked off with a raft building and paddle leg

   

then a short bike

  

a run/trek on a sick coast trail, including a stream bash to a waterfall

 

a long bike section, including a optional section through the local bike park, a rifle shoot, and a 300m tunnel!

 

a run/trek, including a zipline thingy across a river and a swim to get 2 checkpoints.
 

This was by far the most exciting part of our race, as the trail we took ended just short of the zipline due to a rock slide, and rather than run back and around to the track on the other side of the river, we decided to slide/fall down a 5m cliff/bank, cross the river and climb a equally as foreboding cliff on the other side. We made it with only minor scrapes and bruises, but everyone was pretty scared, because we dislodged some pretty big rocks, I caught the two girls after falling down the bank, and then we had to use a rope to get up the other side! It certainly made for a good post-race story though!     

one last final bike

finish!

dinner and debrief

The three teams from New Plymouth took first, second and third, and Danny and Oak's junior teams cleaned up as well, so we were all pretty happy and exhausted on the way home :D

A massive thanks to our support crews (i.e our parents) and our amazing coach, Mr. Hewlett. We couldn't have done it without you!!!

  

Tiger Jackets and Stuff

The Tiger Jacket. For anyone who is associated with New Plymouth Boys' High culture, it is known as a symbol of success, either in academics, sports, culture or leadership. Every boy hopes to earn one during their time at the school, and even the naturally very humble New Zealanders will look for opportunities to wear it with pride :)

I first earned mine this year for Leadership, after being made a prefect and a Head of House, and I'll be honest I was actually very proud and honored to receive it. Funny, considering that two years ago when I moved here I thought they were a pretty ugly waste of fabric. haha!

The assembly when one receives his Tiger Jacket is a very special and formal occasion, Your whole family is invited, you get to walk across stage, and each boy gets to ask a favorite member of staff to present him with the jacket.

 This is me, nailing the donning of my jacket. As a joke among the boys, you get graded on how well you put the jacket on, and those whose arms get stuck or forget to flip down their collar get teased relentlessly :D

 Shaking the headmaster's hand!!!

 Our 2015 leadership team: in Tiger Jackets in front are the Head Boy and his deputy, in the jackets behind them are the four House Leaders, and the rest make up the "prefect" team.

I just recently earned my Tiger Jacket again, this time for academics. If all goes well, by the end of the year I'll earn one for volleyball and adventure racing too :D

On the left: me with my parents in the boarder's lounge after first receiving my TJ

On the right: me with my best friend and adventure racing teammate, Cory Sutherland, after we both received ours for academics