It’s a real privilege to speak on behalf of the kayaking club. Now it doesn’t feel that long ago that I was travelling to my first secondary school’s comp, repping the Terrace primary school tracksuit, in a van full of scary giants….. I mean Dunstan High School students. But wow, what a journey it’s been since then. 

I’ve trained in Canada, competed in Australia and explored some of the most remote parts of New Zealand. And the best part is, I got to do it alongside our awesome Dunstan crew.

The past season was a big success for our club. The main events for Dunstan kayaking are the Canoe slalom National Secondary Schools held in Tekapo in April and the Canoe polo South Island Secondary Schools held in Oamaru in August. 

The canoe polo competition went extremely well. We had 3 junior and 2 senior teams competing. With our Junior A team cleaning up and smoking the competition in what has to be one of the most relaxed finals I’ve ever seen, taking a well deserved first place in the junior division. Whilst our senior A team took a respectable second place after a hard-fought final in which we went a goal down with only 15 seconds left in the game. Overall the Dunstan teams performed highly, and it was great to see so many junior paddlers competing. I’d like to give a very special thanks to Kira Goldsmith and John Williamson for the many hours spent organising the trip and to Max Collier for coaching the teams.

Now all the way back in April, 15 students travelled to Tekapo to compete in the canoe slalom National Secondary Schools. Not only was this a massive learning experience for many of our paddlers, but it was also a time when we could finally put all the hard work and huge amount of hours spent training into a race. For 7 paddlers this was also their first time racing, which made it that much better when they achieved some awesome results. In regards to placings Neve Spooner, Ethan Knights and myself placed 2nd in U18 C1 teams, Jasper Wearing placed 3rd in the U14 C1 individual, Harry Thow and Mitch Mcnally placed 2nd in U16 C2, I placed first in U18 K1 and Tom Goldsmith placed 2nd in the U16 k1 division getting the result he deserved after training non-stop for months. A massive thanks once again to Kira Goldsmith and Ian Knights for organsing the trip and to Gordy Rayner who was head coach last season and has been fundamental towards the improvement of our paddlers.

With all that said, the future of paddling here at Dunstan is looking bright.