Local team marching into nationals
Seven enthusiastic members of the Northern Star Leisure Marching Team are set to attend their first NZ National Leisure Marching event.
The team only formed in November 2021 and is already competing at the 2024 National event being held in Invercargill this month.
There are 72 teams from across the country, including three from Northland, participating in the two-day event.
The first day starts with a march past and official opening, followed by the team displays.
The big event finishes with a maize march and in the evening a Winter Wonderland-themed function will be held at the ILT Stadium.
The Northern Star Leisure Marching team is a mix of ex-marchers who marched in their teen years, as well as beginners to the sport. Four founding members remain with the team.
They are a group of 10 diverse women who enjoy the fun, fitness and friendship that is gained from being in a leisure marching team. A strong sense of team spirit is felt by all, they say.
During the past two years, the team has travelled to organised marching display days in Waipu, Auckland, Tauranga and Kerikeri. Later this year, the 2024 North Island Leisure Marching event is being held in Taupo and the team also plan to attend this event.
They couldn’t make these trips happen without intensive fundraising efforts, which have included raffles, sausage sizzles, cake stalls and market days, along with the support of their sponsors Orrs Pharmacy, Bunnings, New World and Pak’nSave.
This group, aged from 50 to 80 years, continues to seek sponsorship for future away events and a much-needed new uniform. Currently, they wear jackets gifted to them by another team that was replacing its uniform.
The Northern Star team was formed when coach and marcher Lyn set out to create another Northland team. She already marched in the Kaipara team.
Her passion and dedication to leisure marching shows through in her ability to write marching plans for three teams and march two of those plans with the Kaipara and Northern Star teams.
Leisure Marching – which has the motto of “fun, fitness and friendship” – began in New Zealand, in 1991, when a group of six friends met at Fergusson Park, Tauranga to form a team which was named The Marching Grans. TV One filmed them in June 1991 for the Holmes Show.
Although the Northern Stars is a leisure marching team, rather than a competitive one, the marchers practice twice a week for up to 3 months before going to big events.