Principal's Message

Welcome back to Term 4 and the last couple of months of the school year. It was great to see all our young people return safe and refreshed after the holiday break. 

I reminded all our students at assembly the other morning, that Term 4 goes by very quickly and that every day counts towards next year’s foundation – no matter what year level they are in. We will soon be farewelling our seniors as they go on exam leave. Teachers are running tutorials regularly, providing extra curriculum support and doing their best to ensure that our senior students are well prepared for their exams. Please work with us by ensuring that your children are spend quality study time at home and seek out support where it is needed before it is too late.

We have much to be grateful for, and it was a timely reminder for me on Sunday at mass when listening to the gospel reading of the Ten Lepers – or more pertinently, the one leper who returned to say thank you – that we need to remind ourselves to be grateful for all our blessings at this time of the year. Life gets busy leading up to end of year celebrations, Christmas preparations and an outdoors lifestyle in spring weather. Another ‘grateful’ conversation that is timely at this stage of the year is reminding our young people of all who have helped them develop and grow during the year that has been. Although it is our daily work as educators, I am constantly impressed with those staff who give so much more than their ‘day job’. This holidays alone, we had staff leading Duke of Edinburgh tramps, taking students to WOW, running an Edmund Rice Camp, organising mountainbiking champs, and coaching and managing teams that went to national tournaments, among other things. Thank you all.

Our Basketball and Curling teams performed particularly well at nationals during the holidays and we acknowledged these teams and their coaches and managers during an assembly on Tuesday morning. We are proud to say that our senior girls’ basketball team were crowned the ‘A’ Girls champions at the 2019 Schick Secondary Schools National Championships in Palmerston North. They will be proud to hang their banner alongside the boys’ banner from 2014. It was great having our senior boys’ team also competing at the same nationals and present to support the girls in their final. As if one title wasn’t enough, our girls’ curling team also won gold at the National Curling Championships in Naseby for the third consecutive year while the Boys’ team took out the silver award. On behalf of our college community I wish to thank all these players and coaching teams for their commitment, perseverance and wonderful attitude.

Just a reminder that with the change in uniform beginning 2020, an email will be sent home next week to clarify the timeline for bringing in the new items of uniform.

Mr Terry Han and his wife, Jinha kim, welcomed a baby boy into their family this week, and Emily Stevens became engaged during the holiday break. Warm congratulations to both these staff.

With the feast day of St John Paul II being celebrated next week, it is timely to recall some of his inspirational words -

The future starts today, not tomorrow.
Do not be afraid. Do not be satisfied with mediocrity. Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.

Let’s keep encouraging our children to commit fully to their opportunities every day.

God bless,

Kate Nicholson