After the New Zealand National Secondary Schools’ Championship was successfully reintroduced this year, it will now become a permanent feature on the Summer of Bowls calendar – and will be played again in Auckland on Tuesday/Wednesday 31st March/1st April 2020.
New on the job, Steven Yates, General Manager of the Auckland Centre, is excited about once again hosting the tournament. “Despite a few minor glitches last year, those that attended were overwhelmingly in support of the tournament continuing into the future.”
And Yates is making sure that 2020’s tournament will be glitch-free.
“The Centre was short on support on the ground last year,” explains Yates.
“That’s already been addressed for not only next year’s Secondary Schools, but for other Centre tournaments as well. The recent Auckland Women’s Premier Open Singles was a great example of how things can go like clockwork now we’ve got our resourcing up to speed.”
Yates has also co-opted representatives from schools to ensure that next year’s tournament runs as smoothly as everyone wants it to.
“We’re here to look at the logistics of the tournament with our bowls and tournament management eyes. We’re getting the schools on board to view the tournament with their school and student management eyes. Hopefully, between us, we’ll put on a great show.”
Perhaps the greatest enhancement to next year’s tournament will be the fact that out-of-town teams will pay no entry fee.
“We acknowledge that the tournament is once again in Auckland,” says Yates, “which can seem unfair to other schools throughout the country. But Auckland being by far and away our biggest population centre making its attractiveness difficult to ignore. So the least we can do is waive out-of-town schools’ entry fees.”
School Sport New Zealand has described the fee-waiver initiative as ‘fantastic’. And as a result, the umbrella school sport organisation will be sanctioning the tournament – and promoting and recommending it to all schools nationwide.
“That’s a huge boost to the tournament in itself,” says Yates. “It means that we’ll have two fronts publicising the tournament : School Sports and us here at bowls. As a result we expect over 200 teams to enter next year, up from 130 this year.”
Bowls New Zealand CEO, Mark Cameron, is thrilled that the Auckland Centre has put its hand up again to run the tournament.
“The tournament is extremely important to us. Rangitahi (teenagers) represent the future players of bowls. And physical activity through sport, including bowls, represents the future of our rangitahi.”
Cameron is a zealous advocate of Sport New Zealand’s philosophy to encourage ‘everybody (to be) active’. “Getting young kids off their screens and into bowls is one way we can help to create a healthy, active young community.”
“The tournament also provides a unique opportunity for a mixed participation experience for the kids. We welcome girls’ and boys’ teams from participating schools, but we also welcome mixed teams. In other words, triples made up of two girls and a boy … or for that matter, two boys and a girl. That doesn’t happen in other sports.”
The tournament will include both singles and triples events. But irrespective of whether a student has entered individually or as part of a team, they are at the tournament representing their school.
Yates’s team at centre headquarters at Mt Eden are still dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s on the organisational details, but entries are now open.
Presumably last year’s champions – Tauranga Boys’ High (Boys’ Singles), Waiheke College (Girls’ Singles) and Matamata College (Triples) – will be chomping at the bit to get their entry in to defend their titles.
by Rob Davis
