Three titles for Taurian
Badminton
Year 12 student Taurian McConnochie had a busy school holidays, with some great badminton achievements, starting with the Thames Valley Championship.
Deciding to do both the Senior and Under-19 competitions, he came away with three Thames Valley titles and two runners-up placings: the Under-19 single male champion; U19 mixed doubles champion; senior doubles champion; senior singles male runner-up; and senior plate mixed runner-up.
He then entered in the Waikato B Championship, which was a big step up competing against higherranked players. He ended up winning the Plate Mixed Doubles with Emma Lowe and making the Plate Men’s Doubles semifinal with Ben Mullan.
On the weekend of October 14-15, he entered the North Island U19 Badminton Champs in Rotorua, achieving great results as a 16-year-old in this competition. Epic three-setters and body on the line saw Taurian walk away with a third place in Men’s Doubles and a top-six finish in singles. From this tournament he went straight to the Badminton Thames Valley Prizegiving, where he was named Junior Player of the Year.
Waikato Ultimate Schools Day
On October 18, Mr Besley took a team over to the Waikato Schools invitational to play. With a young team consisting of mostly Year 10s and 11s, they competed really well against mostly senior players, coming away with three wins and two losses, placing them third behind Hamilton Boys 2 and 1. Mike Rousell got runner-up male player of the day over all the teams. Charlotte Tanner proved her worth as the only girl in the boys team.
With two junior ultimate competitions coming up (BoP Juniors and TVSS Juniors) in November, Mr Besley would like any interested Year 9 or 10 boys and girls to make themselves known to him, as practice is currently happening at lunchtime.