Respect the climb, march as one

David Walton Captain of School

It is hard to believe that the 2024 academic year is already halfway through.

Summer Term has been far from quiet with a range of different exciting opportunities and experiences. At the beginning of the year, I introduced the theme for 2024, as decided by the Year 12 leadership group: ‘Respect the climb, march as one.’ This theme was designed to encapsulate what it means to be a Scotch College student. The first part of the theme, ‘respect the climb,’ acknowledges that school life, like climbing a mountain, can be quite challenging. However, when we ‘march as one’ our strengths accumulate, and we take one more step on the path of progress.

I think the best embodiment of this theme thus far has come from our swim team who took home, for the second year in a row, the prestigious Tregonning Cup, a feat not performed since 1949/50. Whilst we do have some extraordinary swimmers, challenging events such as the Inter-School Swimming Carnival cannot be won by just one person, it can only be achieved by a group working in unison, marching as one.

As a College, we have always sought to strengthen the bonds of unity amongst our House groups, particularly through the week-long Year 9 Rottnest Camp. However, this also allowed for a new addition to the Student Leadership Programme as the House Captains and I were fortunate enough to be able to go over to Rottnest for the day. We snorkelled, made creative beach art, learnt about Rottnest history, played beach games, and explored the Rottnest ecosystem within our own House groups. It was a terrific experience as we learnt more about the Year 9s and conversely, they got to learn more about us.

In addition to this, as part of our Student Leadership Programme, we reignited our leadership meetings with the Year 12 leaders at PLC. We brainstormed new ways for our schools to engage with one another as well as reflecting on existing events such as World’s Greatest Shave and the always, much-anticipated Scotch vs PLC netball game. These leadership meetings have been extremely helpful, and it is something which we are looking to implement on a termly basis.

As a school, we also celebrated and paid special mention to the women in our lives at our International Women’s Day assemblies. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend both the Middle School and Senior School assembly. It was very nice to watch a video tribute of the Middle School boys acknowledging women who have inspired them in their lives, as well as listening to Hon Justice Larissa Strk talking about overcoming adversity and the role young men play in empowering women everywhere.

This term has flown past and I am eager for what the rest of the year has to offer.