Sports Xmas 2019
Extra-curricular activities TERM 2
A reminder that the sign up period for term 2 activities is now open and will remain open until Sunday 15 December at 11.59pm.
We encourage all students to sign up for at least one sports club per term and there are more offerings in term 2 for students of all abilities, including fitness and strength and conditioning clubs that we have not offered before as well as additional off-site activities. Most competitions for our younger students in B, C & D grade start in Term 2 so it is important that students in Years 7-11 attend clubs in order to start preparing for when these start. Most of our sports clubs have an open door policy, or we run recreational sessions alongside the team training, so anyone who has an interest in a particular sport is able to attend.
The extra-curricular activities programme is due to start on MONDAY 13 JANUARY unless stated differently on the sign-up sheet. We look forward to seeing even more students participating in our programme in term 2.
Sports team kit
For the last year we have been working hard to standardise and centralise all our school sports team kit so we have one company who is responsible for designing and manufacturing the kit for all our teams. We put this out to tender and had many companies interested in providing this kit for us. A requisite of the tender process was for the company to create a strong school identity for us around the South Island ‘Stingrays’ name, using our school colours of green, blue and white and also provide an online ordering platform with home delivery to be expected within a maximum of 14 days.
I am very pleased to say that we have recently signed an agreement with Kukri, a UK company but with a strong presence in Hong Kong, to provide kit for all our sports teams. The in-house designer at Kukri has created an amazing design for us and the new kit designs are attached below for you to have a look at. The new kit will be slightly more expensive to purchase than the kit the students have purchased in the past however the quality is very high and there will be a resale service available once students have outgrown their kit or moved on from South Island. The online ordering platform will be up and running in the New Year although orders will not be placed until the kit is in stock at Kukri’s warehouse in Hong Kong. The kit will be available to be purchased by all students who are attending training and would like to represent the school at sport.
Here are some examples of the new kit. The full storyboard is on display in the PE corridor.
Thank you in advance for supporting this initiative and we hope to see all our sports team participants representing South Island School in their new kit from February onwards.
End of term Review
Now that the first term draws to a close I would like to thank all of the SIS community for their support during what has been a particularly testing period. In school, our sport classes have been disrupted and continuity lost, our extra-curricular programme has been affected in the same way with make-up sessions being scheduled to catch up on the valuable time lost, and our teams have suffered from matches being cancelled and rescheduled. We also lost our own school Athletics Day, which is one of the highlights of the year, although hopefully this will be rescheduled later in the year.
Despite all the disruption we have managed to keep our extra-curricular programme going and our teams going to competitions, when many other schools have cancelled their programmes for the rest of the term, or not allowed their students to have more time out of class. This is due to the support of our students, parents and staff who look beyond the classroom and see the value in students participating in other areas of school life.
Fortunately we have managed to achieve some good results despite the disruptions, with our A grade rugby boys winning the HK Schools rugby competition again, our A grade girls basketball team being in the final of the ESF competition as well as the semi-finals of the HKSSF competition, the A grade boys basketball team being close to qualifying for the HKSSF semi-finals, and the swimming teams doing exceptionally well at the HKSSF gala, with the B grade girls coming 1st with the girls team finishing 4th overall and the boys team 3rd.
This school/life balance is really important in times such as these, and it is vitally important that students take time for themselves and the activities they enjoy doing, to help balance their mind and body.
With that in mind we wish you all a very happy Christmas and look forward to seeing everybody again, feeling refreshed, in the new year.
Regards
Jon Redding
Director of Sport & Activities
