A Welcome

Four weeks into the New Year back at TBC - the fantastic year we had in the UK already seems something of a blur as the beginning of a new school year is always frenetic. There are record numbers at the school again in 2011 with over 1850 boys on the roll and many others wanting to send their sons here. Things are a little disrupted too as we have 9 prefabs on the lawn between the tennis courts & the Main Block as both the Science Tower (1997) & New Gym (1999) are leaky buildings and we need to relocate from those through the year so they can be refurbished !!!!

There are 9 new members of staff with the usual good numbers of Old Boys on deck again to make sure the traditions are maintained. Those here for 2011 include Garry Carpenter, Brian Ebbett, Andrew Fergusson, Nathan Fry, Logan Gemming, Steve Graham, Shay Hulsebosch, Warren Keenan, Chris Lee, Wayne Merritt, Hans Meys, Peter Nicholson, Barry Parkinson, Robin Rimmer, Aramahou Ririnui, Brad Smith, Rob Sperling, Michael Thorne, Andrew Turner, Mike Verschaffelt & Charles Williams.

Academic Excellence

In Assemblies over the last couple of weeks we have been celebrating the academic success of our students in exams from last year. In NCEA 16 students had their certificates endorsed with Excellence while a further 133 had their certificates endorsed with Merit. A recent innovation has been the TBC Centurions award which recognises the students who passed 100% of their Credits sat in any one year. There were 52 students who managed this. Announcement of the 2010 Scholarship Awards has just been completed and for TBC this was an outstanding year. A total of 56 individual Scholarship passes were obtained which is 20 more than ever before. Scholarships were won across 16 subjects by 31 different individual students. We gained more than all of the other schools in Tauranga combined ( TGC, Otumoetai College, Mount College, Te Puke HS, Bethlehem College & Aquinas College ) and were top of the Super 8 schools as well. The only Boys Schools in the country to beat our total were all decile 10 compared to our 6 - ie. Auckland GS, Wellington College & Christ's College.

Old Boys 2011

Your Committee has had its first meeting for the year and a tentative schedule of events has been put in place. These will be confirmed shortly but will follow a similar pattern to the very successful events of last year. We plan to push for an increase in paid membership in 2011 so that the activities of the Association are fully self-funding rather than being supported by the school. Please play your part by paying the $35 as outlined on the website www.tbcoba.org.nz or you can send a cheque to the school Attn. R.Leslie

The schedule for events to date is as follows but there will be more details at a later date :

School Sport

It is not the busiest time for sport at the school but that said there have been some excellent performances in the last couple of months:

Athletics

Our 2011 Sports Captain Julian Oakley led a team to the NZSS Athletics champs where he picked up silver in the Senior 800m. At last weeks school athletics he broke both the Senior 800 & 1500m records by about 2 seconds with the record set by J. Dunlop in 1965 of 1:59.7 reduced to 1:58.2 for the 800 m. Three other records were also broken. At the NZ Champs our Juniors won gold as a 6 man Road Race team, silver as a 3 man team with Scott Croasdale winning the individual bronze medal.

Kayaking

TBC has had 4 students selected to represent NZ @ Australian Nationl Championships. Cole O'Connor-Stratton & Laurence Brown were also picked for the World Champs in North America later in the year. The Senior Men's team includes 5 TBC Old Boys of the 6 selected.

NZSS Beach Volleyball were held at Mount Beach last week with TBC teams claiming all 3 medals in the Junior competition. Brad Fullerton & Joseph Winstanley were the winners coached by Old Boy Sam Wallace-Boyd.

Old Boys

Super 15 Rugby

This competition began last week with 4 Old Boys involved. The Braid brothers Daniel & Luke are both in the Blues, Tanerau Latimer is back with the Chiefs while Jarrad Hoeata was an important part of a surprise Highlander win against the Hurricanes.

Cricket

Kane Williamson is currently in India with the BlackCaps competing in the World Cup One Day competition.

Hockey

The Blacksticks have been involved in a 5 match series against 6th ranked South Korea in the last 2 weeks with Old Boys Andy Hayward & Steve Graham enjoying considerable game time. New Zealand won the series 2-1 with 2 draws as a part of their build-up to next years Olympics.

Thoughts are with the people of Christchurch at this time. We at the school are putting plans in place to offer what help we can to the victims of earthquake.

All the best to everyone,
Rob Leslie


Please remember to pay your $35 membership fee by sending a cheque or by direct credit. Paypal is on its way! Details on how to join are here.