On Sunday, 18 March the Rutherford Dragon Boating teams attended the 2018 Auckland Dragon Boat Championships. We had been training every Wednesday for 6 weeks, and we were all super excited to be attending this event.

The day started off really well (even though we had to be at school at 6am), and everyone was happy that it was finally the time for the big event, the thing we had been preparing weeks for! The first event we competed in was the 500m sprints. Rutherford Dragons absolutely dominated the competition, coming first in all of their races, taking overall first place and winning gold medals!

In between the 500m and the next set of heats, we got the chance to see some of the other competing schools perform their chant. All of the chants were energetic and fun to watch, and when our turn came around, we were all ecstatic to be showing off our confidence to everyone. Our chant was amazing, and even though we went over time, we were all really impressed with our efforts.

When the day was starting to wrap up, the team prepared for prize giving. The overall turnout of the day was great for our school, with Rutherford Dragons coming 1st in 500m sprint, 2nd in 200m sprints, and 3rd in boys 200m, in which we created a hybrid team with Lynfield College.

Rutherford also won the chant competition, so everyone went home happy with a day’s worth of fun and exciting memories. I would definitely recommend giving Dragon boating a try, it’s a great chance to have an awesome time and work together with some really neat people.

Thank you so much to Laura, Jill and Jill, Miss Halliday and Miss Hatcher, our amazing sweeps Jean and Vinesh for all your time and effort (Thanks for all the bread as well, Jean). All in all this year’s Dragon Boating event was extremely successful for the school, and I hope to be able to do it again next year!