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Junior School Sport participation fun and development.
Our special sports culture
At Dio Junior School we are incredibly proud of our young sports girls on a number of fronts and it’s not all to do with their results.
Our values are aligned with Sport New Zealand as we focus on participation, fun and development, and push back on early specialisation, over-training and an over-emphasis on winning. At the Junior School our mantra is sports for all in a fun, supportive, fair and organised environment.
Our participation rates have been very high this season. We just love the enthusiasm our girls have shown for their winter sports. We offered a range of options including netball, hockey, futsal, flippa ball, ski racing and playball for our younger girls. The schedule enabled the girls to play more than one major sport code. We are very proud of the way the girls developed through the season from a technical standpoint, while in their team sports learning about spatial awareness and the finer points of attacking and defending. We’ve also loved seeing the fun factor in action, supported by our families.
Emeralds Year 5 netball team
WINTER SEASON SPORTS
Twelve netball teams and 12 hockey teams from Years 1 to 6 participated in the Auckland Netball and Auckland Hockey leagues respectively. Meanwhile five flippa ball teams from Years 3 to 6 and three futsal teams from Years 1 to 6 also competed during the winter months. To top this all off, we sent three ski racing teams, comprised of girls from Years 3 to 6, to the NIPS Ski Championships at Mt Ruapehu.
On the sports turf, courts, slopes and in the pool, we’ve seen some characterbuilding moments, examples of resilience, commitment, determination and good sportsmanship. We’ve seen friendships grow. Some of our results have been fantastic but more importantly, we’ve observed some superb development over the course of the season. The girls have had so much fun playing their chosen sport and at the same time, they’ve enhanced their health and well-being and brought our community together. It’s been a joy to watch the girls in action this winter.
Year 1&2 netball Red Fun Ferns with their coaches
DIO SKI RACING TAKES OFF
We’ve seen a big increase in the number of girls participating in ski racing this winter. Just over 20 girls signed up for the race training programme at Snowplanet and we were able to enter three teams into the North Island Primary Schools’ Ski Championships competition at Mt Ruapehu.
The NIPS Ski Champs event was huge, with 123 North Island primary schools competing. Teams comprised of up to five skiers. We estimate there were at least 700 young skiers competing at this event.
Each skier had to complete an individual giant slalom race on the first day and then a dual slalom race against another competitor with a similar speed on the second day. Points were aggregated into an overall team score to give the final team rankings.
Junior ski racers preparing for their warm-up
Our Dio Blue team finished in sixth place overall. This was an amazing achievement as the team was comprised of a mix of four Years 3 and 4 and two Year 6 girls. All of them were pretty fast on their runs to achieve this result! Our Dio Red team were very competitive and finished in 20th place; and our Dio White team did so well to finish in 52nd place, putting them in the top half of the table.
Apart from their results, our girls were commended for their behaviour and attitude. The event was nerve wrecking as each girl attempted to race at her best – this required a fair amount of courage and resilience and our girls certainly delivered in this regard. They were also observed being good sports to the opposition, shaking hands, smiling and waiting patiently in the long, and at times, boisterous queues.
THANKS TO OUR EXTENSIVE SUPPORT NETWORK
To enable our winter sports programme, we utilised a large support network of 70 coaches, including some outstanding external coaches, parents and senior Dio student coaches; 35 team managers and 20 umpires. Thanks to all our support network for their commitment and effort. At Dio Junior School we have a very special and unique community of highly engaged junior sports girls, senior student coaches, parents and supporters. Thanks to all our teachers too for coming along to encourage the girls on game days.
