D Block was buzzing with excitement on Friday morning as the Year 7’s were about to have their very first sports day at Sancta Maria College.
The day was managed by Bigfoot Adventures, who had some adventure-based learning activities planned.
The first activity was to design a flag and come up with a team name. The prefects worked with their Year 7 group to cover a rectangle of calico cotton with names, the team’s name and other designs.
My, Flynn and Harini’s team called ourselves Team Rainbow (later revised to Team Infinity Stone), notably inspired by the rainbow bandanas we chose. Then we all sat together to announce our names to the other groups, and the instructors introduced the concept of ‘golden nuggets’ and how they will be awarded to groups who show exceptional value and the group with the most at the end of the day would win… nothing! But it’s about the journey not the reward…!
Team Rainbow started with ‘Tallest Tower’. For this activity, the students all learnt to tie knots; knots more complex than the ‘bunny ears’ we all know. We used these skills to tie a total of five bamboo poles together and create a taller tower than the other groups.
After taking a break for interval we moved onto ‘Build a Bike’, our second activity led by our own Reuben Cooper, the famous cyclist of Sancta Maria College. As the name suggests, the students had to build a bike, and then ride it on a small, organised course.
Third activity was Archery. The students were briefed on how it was going to work and then split into three groups. Each person had three arrows to shoot. In the last group there was some free spots which we prefects snuck into to have a few tries ourselves!
Next, we had Disc Golf, led by prefects. This involved throwing heavy discs, either a driver or a putter, at a stick with the number of tries being the points, and the least amount of tries being the winner.
Each individual prefect got a small group to guide through the course and tally the points.
Finally, it was lunch, everyone had some good kai and got to catch up with each other.
There was just one session left, which we had split between two games due to the set-up of this particular station – another one led by prefects.
First we had the Marshmallows Game. This required the group to split in half and was dependent on their teamwork and communication. They had a small stack of either pink or white tiles (giving the name marshmallows, sadly no real marshmallows!) and had to use them to get everyone past the cones on the other side. There were fewer tiles than people so there was a lot of doubling up on the tiles and throwing the tiles far to cover distance.
But the best game had to be what we had last, ‘Dead Ants’. In simple terms: there were 21 numbers on the ground within a circle and we were all numbered to 21 (yes prefects included) and in as quick a time as possible we needed to step on our number and cross the circle in order of number.
Slightly complicated but nothing we couldn’t handle. Here’s the kicker though: the team that went right before us broke the past record at 13.09, and we were the last team to play so we needed to beat them. It wasn’t looking good at first, averaging at 20s with people messing up or not shouting loud enough; plus, I slipped in the first round. But believe it or not, we did it. We broke that record by 0.86s at 12.23!
Overall, our team got 14 golden nuggets, and while that seemed like a lot we were still short and lost to Sean and Lavinia’s team. So well done to them!
We would like to give a huge thank you to the Year 7 teachers, especially Miss Black who organised such a fun event for all of us. A great time was had by all!
