The tournament director says it promises to be another 'incredible tournament'
An East Coast hockey team that had to train on concrete netball courts is now competing at the 2023 Zespri Aims Games for the first time in the school’s history.
Te Kura ō Manutuke has brought 10 students to the games who will all be competing in mixed hockey this week.
A record 373 schools had registered, bringing 11,733 athletes who would compete across 25 sporting codes. That is 50 more schools than last year and 12 more than the event’s peak of 361 in 2019.
The 2023 tournament is also welcoming back international schools from the Cook Islands, Fiji, and Samoa.
One of the boys on Te Kura ō Manutuke’s mixed team picked up a hockey stick for the first time four weeks ago after he was asked to join when two of the original players could no longer compete.
His first-ever game was scheduled for today against Te Puke Intermediate.
Teacher Pare Tureia said he was one of those “natural sports kids” and said they had just told the student to get the ball into the goal.
The team had two hockey sticks; one they used when they played on the turf in Gisborne, and one they used when training on the concrete netball courts at school.
“They’re [the hockey sticks] so munted,” Tureia laughed.
The country school had 170 students from Year 1 to 12, and hoped to send students to the Aims Games every year from now on.
The crowd at the opening ceremony at the 18th Aims Games. Photo / Alex Cairns
Tureia said they had “nothing to lose” going into this tournament, and said it was important that the students played to win but were also okay with losing.
Tureia said the students were “so excited” and laughed when saying they had “no idea what they’re up against”, though they did draw in the intermediate finals at Poverty Bay Hockey last month.
He said they were “loving it” already and had found “everyone so welcoming”.
They were staying at a BnB at the beach in Pukehina, and it “took about an hour to settle them down”.
He said the biggest factor against bringing a team across from Gisborne was the “huge” cost, but they were “determined to come” after the difficult few years for the community.
Tureia said Gisborne was badly hit by the floods this year, closing the school for “ages” and forcing students back to online learning, following Covid-19 lockdowns in previous years.
