School News

The Hamilton Boys’ High School 1st XV Rugby team played their first post-Sanix World Cup winning game in New Zealand yesterday afternoon.  The kick off was at 3.30pm, on a gloomy, damp pitch.  The conditions deteriorated significantly as the game progressed, affecting the visibility and the quality of play.  Hamilton Boys’ High School dominated the first half of the game; Kirtis McNaughten performing particularly well under increasing difficult circumstances.  All 36 of HBHS’ points were scored in the first half. St Paul’s led a spirited come-back in the second forty minutes, but they were only able to score 12 as the weather closed in.

The 1st XV have recovered from their travel to Japan and are now becoming more focused on the grueling season ahead of them.  It was wonderful to be able to use the new gymnasium to welcome them back, and to see their achievements covered by One News, Maori TV and the New Zealand Herald.

Click here to view the video.

Three promising young Waikato University engineers have received scholarships from leading New Zealand engineering consultancy Beca.

HBHS Old Boy Thomas White (pictured, left), Rene Engelbrecht and Aaron Matenga are the 2012 recipients of the scholarships, worth $2,500 each. Offered to high-achieving students in their third year of a Bachelor of Engineering degree, the scholarships are designed to help address the skills shortage in engineering.

All three students say the scholarships are a huge blessing, and recognition of years of hard work.

“This scholarship is recognition of the work I’ve put in over the years and encouragement to keep it up. It lets me put aside the typical financial woes of student life and focus on my studies,” says Thomas, a process engineering student.

The 2012 HBHS school cross country results are as follows:

Senior Championship

Hi everyone.

Sorry for the delay in the next update, it’s been an intense couple of days as we are getting down to the business end of training.

On our second day here we went for a road ride in the morning and we were allowed to go for a wee climb. We found an 8km gradual climb and rode up it slowly as we had our first day on the track that afternoon. This would be just getting used to riding back on a track bike and used to a smaller track. Being a smaller track, there is a lot of G-force in the corners, so it was a bit dodgy for the first effort but that was to be expected.  It was the first time we’d been on the track in a few months. We did four Team Pursuits (TPs) at about 80 – 90% on the first day and by the end we were all looking a lot smoother than when we started.

Day 2 at the track involved a 15min progressive TP warm up. This was followed by one individual 500m standing start, four seated kilos (1km not getting out of the seat to start), then two standing team kilos with. I went well in the 500m doing the second fastest time, then for the kilos I was sitting at around the third to forth position. It was a hard and long day in the office and to top it off, we did an hour on the road afterwards. Doing the hour on the road flushes the legs out so we aren’t as fatigued for the next day.

Yesterday I had my last race: the Individual Pursuit. Fraser Gough and I were the two New Zealand riders entered in the event. Of the two of us, I was to race first. I woke up feeling fresh and ready to race. However, it wasn’t the best of days. It was raining and cold, so it was going to be slow day on the track because the air is denser with weather like this. I was still going to ride to my schedule of 3.20 and hope I didn’t blow up.

I had a good warm up and was ready to go. I started off on -chedule and was holding it until I had onekm to go.  At that point I started to go into 22 second laps, but went as deep as I could on the last lap, doing a time of 3.22s and finishing seventh in the world. It was not the time I wanted to do, but I was till stoked that I broke my Personal Best record by three seconds. Only one person went under 3.20s with a time of 3.19s, and the others that beat me all did 3.21s and 3.22s. My team mate Fraser Gough came in a second after me, doing a 3.23 and finished ninth.