Where our Olympians went to school

Big or small, from north to south, schools across the land helped nurture our athletes.

and so it should be again in the years to come.

QUALITY NOT QUANTITY

On Tuesday, August 9, at John Paul II High School in Greymouth textbooks and pencil cases were put aside, with everyone’s eyes instead transfixed on TVS beaming pictures from Rio, where former student Ruby Tui was playing for New Zealand in the women’s sevens final.

Tui was head girl in 2009 and is still the pride of the school, which has a roll of less than 200, making it one of the nation’s smallest.

She played a bit of rugby and sevens while at school, then, as principal Kieran Stone puts it, ‘‘next thing we knew she was in the New Zealand team’’ and the school’s first Olympian.

‘‘I think my last words to her were ‘carry on with sport’, but I always thought she was going to do something in cycling or netball; she was starting to test the waters in terms of triathlon,’’ he says.

The school has kept in touch with Tui while she was in Rio, with students so endearing that they cut out pictures of her and stuck them on their faces so ‘a team of Rubys’ sent messages of support.

‘‘I texted Ruby early in the piece; our attendance officer keeps tabs on her and gives her a bit of cheek now and then,’’ Stone says

‘‘And she’s on Facebook so the kids were jumping on there and having a look at pictures and sharing a few messages.’’

Screens were set up in classrooms for everyone to cheer her on in the gold medal match.

‘‘Classes pretty much stopped for the final, which was good. We were posting the times for their games on the intranet and things.

‘‘It was lovely – to have somebody in the Olympics is pretty special.’’

The school will be abuzz upon Tui’s return to the region, where she is likely to feature at an assembly and provide some inspirational words, as well as showing off her silver medal.

It’s some effort for the school to catapult a student onto the world’s biggest sporting stage, and Stone has some quick-witted reasoning for it.

‘‘We of course don’t go for quantity, we go for quality,’’ he says.

‘‘The kids love their sport here and we encourage them to get involved in things. It just seems to be what they do on the West Coast.’’

Stone says it doesn’t matter where kids go to to school – that if they want to get to the top then they can. But he does realise the need for youngsters to test themselves against stronger competition.

‘‘If students are good at sports, especially the mainstream sports, they can be talent spotted throughout New Zealand, it doesn’t really matter which school they go to,’’ he says.

‘‘But then it’s making sure they’ve got the competition and so forth. So some students will leave the coast . . . and sometimes we’ll organise that for students.’’

FINDING THE BALANCE

Hamilton Boys’ High School has eight Olympians at Rio, and deputy headmaster Nigel Hotham, who oversees the school’s sports programme, saw all of them come through.

He had the most to do with rugby sevens players Joe Webber and Regan Ware, but a common theme across the group was the way they were able to handle the juggling act that is schoolwork and sport.

‘‘Obviously there’s a real focus at the school about trying to get that balance,’’ he says.

‘‘The thing with sport is it’s such a time-consuming activity when you’re operating at that level. So definitely they’re students that worked very hard in the classroom.

‘‘But some of the credit has to go to the staff here. I think at some schools there’s the feeling that school is just about the classroom and anything else you’ve just got to fit in around it. Definitely at Boys’ High the staff sign on to the fact that some of these boys are going to go on, like these eight boys, to be Olympians, or professional athletes.’’

Hotham says allowing boys to embrace their sporting dreams is important, so they offer plenty of support in busy times.

‘‘Certainly my experience with the staff here is that they bend over backwards to support the boys and make sure they manage their time well and get through those tough periods where the challenge is between fulfilling their responsibility to the cocurricular programme, while still maintaining high academic standards.’’

It’s times like the Olympics where Hotham and others at the school get an overwhelming sense of pride, sitting back and watching these guys they knew as kids footing it with the best on the biggest stage of all. ‘‘It’s fantastic,’’ he says. ‘‘We’ve been streaming the Olympics in the hall at lunchtime. Just the Olympics is special, but when there’s an old boy involved, it just adds another very special level to that excitement of watching and supporting the New Zealand teams.’’

As the saying goes, success breeds success. It’s that intangible aspect which can’t be taught – the inspiration kids draw from Olympic stars.

Hotham said that as the games drew closer, they acknowledged at assemblies the crop of old boys who would be competing. He said many of this group already put plenty back into the school, and their willingness to continue that would be invaluable.

‘‘They are role models for others, and there’s some wonderful stories about young men that sit in an assembly hall and listen to someone speak or hear the headmaster speak about old boys, and are inspired by that to go on and do something similar themselves.’’