After our success at the NISSOC, we were perhaps a shade overconfident going into the NZSSOC. For the second year in a row, we had a poor sprint, with a very high mispunch rate. The juniors were particularly guilty with not insignificant consequences.
At the end of the first day’s sprints, David Rawnsley lead from the front, placing third equal in the senior grade. A strong performance from Logan Stevenson (14th) and the ever reliable Sam Nicholas (23rd) helped our cause. Our intermediates, where we have both talent and numbers, scored even better: Bayley Stephens-Ellison (6th), Nick Wright (9th), Seb Ayson Macfarlane (13th) and five more in the top 25! But our juniors were not represented until Oliver Wright and Charlie Williams recorded a shared 21st =.
Day two was much more convincing. In the championship races, David picked up another bronze, though this time he didn’t have to share the podium, and Logan improved to 12th. Again, the intermediates shone with Amos Plumpton, Bayley and Kingston Webb placing 7th, 8th and 9th. Adam Barron redeemed himself in the Junior grade by finishing second. Tom Robertshaw (8th) and Sam Halford (11th) also stepped up their games. The standard races saw two boys take the podium: junior Daniel McGregor was second while Max McMurray won the senior race.
In the relay, two more junior mispunches saw us biting our nails, but when Tom Bigley anchored Oliver Wright and Daniel to 4th, the damage was mitigated. The intermediates performed exactly as we hoped, even without Bayley, winning comfortably through Kingston, Seb and Amos while Tiaki Fabish, Tawhiwhi Watson and Archie Elliott missed the podium by a place. The senior team of Bayley (running up), Logan and David won by a massive five minutes, with Logan smashing leg 2 to complete an excellent series for him.
When the points were tallied, the junior mispunches on day one saw us tied with Havelock North for the Premier trophy (which, despite the name, is a secondary trophy). This was our eighth win in 23 years with no other club winning more than three. More significantly, we won our 13th New Zealand Top School trophy, continuing our national dominance.
The full team was:
Fergus Cardwell-Dray
Sol Cerson
Hugo Lynch
Daniel McGregor
Charlie Williams
Adam Barron
Thomas Bigley
Ryan Good
Samuel Halford
Thomas Robertshaw
Oliver Wright
Noa Cerson
Archie Elliott
Matthew Halford
Oskar Lynch
Reed Pearce
George Perry
Luke Russell
Keelyn Smith
Jonty Anderson
Seb Ayson Macfarlane
Oliver Burns
Tiaki Fabish
Alex Mahoney
Amos Plumpton
Tawhiwhi Watson
Kingston Webb
Nicholas Wright
Michael Young
Bayley Stephens-Ellison
George Lloyd-Jones
Max McMurray
Che Mihaka-Dyer
Marcus Reeves
Fraser Geddes
Samuel Nicholas
David Rawnsley
Logan Stevenson
