Winter Tournament Week

WINTER TOURNAMENT WEEK 2019

The pinnacle of the winter season for many codes took place in early September during the annual Winter Tournament Week. The week is set aside for winter codes to run their national or regional tournaments – an opportunity for the best school teams from across New Zealand to come together and compete.

This year Dio had a number of teams competing around the country across a range of sporting codes. Thank you to the coaches, managers, staff and volunteers who supported our teams throughout the week, and congratulations to all our athletes who took part and represented the School.

1ST XI FOOTBALL

The 1st XI football team was offered a place in the Lotto Premier Tournament that was held in Taupo. With another relatively young tournament team, the girls had an outstanding week only losing one game throughout the whole tournament. Unfortunately tough pool competition meant that one result was enough for them to miss out on the top half of the draw, but the team played some amazing football throughout to end up winning the Trevor Osten Memorial Trophy for 17th place against New Plymouth Girls’ (5-0), which is their highest ranking at the NZSS tournament in over eight years – an awesome achievement!

PREMIER BASKETBALL

For the third year, Diocesan competed at the NZ Basketball Northern Cup held at North Harbour. The girls arrived in strong spirits ready for a big three days of basketball. The team played extremely well throughout pool play, which saw them progress into the semi-final. They unfortunately had a tough game in the semi-final, losing in overtime, but they went on to win the bronze medal for third place in the playoff against Rutherford. A great finish to the tournament for the team!

UNDERWATER HOCKEY

The underwater hockey senior and junior teams competed at the New Zealand Secondary School Championships held in Wellington. The competition was extremely challenging this year, and both teams were relatively young and new to competing at this level. All our girls played their hearts out and battled through a number of injuries. The improvement throughout the course of the year and the tournament was outstanding and both teams finished in fifth place. Well done to our girls!

PREMIER NETBALL

The premier netball team competed in the UNISS tournament, held at North Harbour. The team went through pool play unbeaten against some tough opposition, which set them up for a semi-final. The girls fought well against a determined Opotiki College and managed to hang on for a 32-28 win to put them through to the final against Bay of Islands College. A lot of nerves in the final saw a game with several unforced errors – the girls did their best but unfortunately went down 33-22. With the team making the final and finishing in second place, they qualify for B grade next year. Well done girls!

1ST XI HOCKEY

The 1st XI hockey team finished fourth in the Federation Cup, held in Auckland. Coming up against eventual champions St Cuthbert’s College in the semi-finals made for a tough match where the girls held on at 0-0 until the last five minutes before unfortunately losing the game. They had a tough play-off for third and fourth against St Margaret’s College, which saw a 1-1 full-time score head to a shoot-out where the girls again narrowly lost. An outstanding week for the group and a remarkable fourth place finish is something of which to be very proud.

2ND XI HOCKEY

The 2nd XI hockey team travelled down to Stratford, competing at the Chris Arthur Cup, a tournament solely for 2nd XIs. The young team had a great week with some outstanding performances, finishing seventh overall after just missing out on the semi-finals, losing in another shoot-out.

WINTER TOURNAMENT WEEK 2019

In and around Winter Tournament week, many individual sports held their National Championships. These events often see competitors compete individually but combine points and/or times with other Dio students to compete as a team.

Prudence Fowler Arabella Tuck

CYCLING

The Diocesan Cycling team had a great season this year – growing in numbers, the club has seen some impressive improvement from all riders, with the girls also having a lot of fun. The team produced some well-earned results at the New Zealand Secondary Schools’ Road and Points Race Nationals in Palmerston North over the last weekend of Term 3. Unfortunately, the Senior Time Trial team did not finish the race due to a crash, but the junior teams put in strong performances.

Prudence Fowler showed her class again dominating the Points Race on the final day of racing, finishing first in New Zealand for the U-17 Girls, and young Arabella Tuck had an outstanding race to finish in second place in the U-16 Girls. All members of the team rode really well throughout the year and we are very proud of everyone’s efforts. We are also extremely grateful to Jose Fowler and all the parents for their help throughout the season.

SWIMMING

Another amazing weekend at the pool saw our swimmers again finish the year in style. The premier swimming team took out second place overall at the NZSS Swimming Championships in Hamilton. This is a pretty amazing achievement considering we had a much smaller team this year and not all girls entered as many events – 16 girls took out 24 medals between them. This included three gold, 13 silver and eight bronze medals. All the girls swam extremely well and supported each other in great spirit throughout the course of the weekend.

On the podium In first place Lena Jacob and third equal Chantelle May and Alice Sharpe.

FENCING

It was a podium-filled tournament for our Dio fencers. Our foil team won gold after a dominant performance in the final, with our girls Lena Jacob, Chantelle May, Alice Sharpe and Jemima Box winning 45-14 to take the title. In the individual competition, all but one medallist were Dio fencers, with Lena finishing first with a convincing 15-5 win in the final, and Chantelle and Alice finishing third equal with impressive performances throughout the competition. It was also a point of pride for the Secretary of Fencing New Zealand, Amanda Hopkins, herself a Dio Old Girl, to see so many Dio shirts on the podium. Amazing achievements from our fencers!

At the North Island Ski Championships

Left to right: Meg Wallace, Molly Crawford, Anabella Eady and Alexandra French.

SKIING

Dio sent two ski teams to compete at the North Island Secondary Schools’ Ski Championships, which were held at Turoa, Ohakune, with 104 teams competing. With many top-level junior and senior skiers at Dio, making the Dio team is a feat in itself! Both Dio’s A and B teams performed exceptionally well: Dio Team A came second overall with 77 points and Dio Team B finished eighth overall with 68 points. This is the fifth year in a row that Dio has won the North Island Championship Girls’ Trophy. Three Years 7 and 8 teams waited out a couple days of bad weather before taking to the mountain. Once they put their skis on the girls performed outstandingly as a team and also had some great individual results. A total of 97 teams competed in the championships with Dio Team A coming second overall with a total of 78 points, and Team B placing 10th overall with 70 points.