Movie night funds sevens trip
The Taupō Girls’ Rugby Team prepares for their overseas trip.
There is only a slight parallel between the 1993 film Cool Runnings which depicts the Jamaican bobsleigh team’s efforts to get to the 1988 Winter Olympics and a team of college girls from Taupō heading to Hong Kong to play sevens.
By Chris Marshall
The girls aren’t taking on a whole new sport, but they are having to fundraise, and some have never been in a plane before let alone out of Aotearoa, says team manager Rose Prisk.
The big connection is that one of their fundraisers is to run a movie night on June 29 at the Great Lake Centre during the Taupō Winter Festival – featuring Paw Patrol, Jumanji, Transformers and Cool Runnings.
The trip at the end of September will see the Taupō Girls Rugby Team, including 11 students from Taupō-nui-a-Tia College and one from Lakeland Learning, head to Hong Kong, home of the famous HSBC sevens tournament, on a Total Sports Tours-arranged trip to play several individual teams.
The sevens connection was one strong drawcard for choosing Hong Kong, Prisk says.
“And we wanted a cultural difference, so the girls actually experience a completely different culture that they have no idea about. It's not going to be like going to Aussie or something like that… Japan would have been amazing, but it was just too much to head there.”
The impetus to travel in search of competition began last year, when three different teams visited to play the girls – two 15 a-side teams from Canada (who they “absolutely smashed”) and a sevens team from Australia (who “smoked” the girls).
“The girls were like ‘we could go and travel overseas and do this.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, we could. We could do this.’”
A sevens team, which means a squad of 12, was more manageable in terms of commitment, said Prisk, than 15s. They will be accompanied by her, her husband Josh the coach, and three parents.
The trip should be a real eye-opener for the girls, Prisk said, the trip of a lifetime, including being in Hong Kong for Hong Kong Day.
“Apparently, it's a real cool festival with lots of fireworks… It's really great to have experiences like these for the kids. We're a small town and you see lots of other larger schools with rugby academies going on trips overseas and doing these kind of tours… and there's no reason why we can't. We just have to put in the effort.”
Which she said they had been, including running Tiny Blacks – a six-week programme on Saturday mornings for three- to six-year-olds – as a fundraiser.
As well as the film idea.
“The girls thought that as we don't have a movie theatre in town it would be a good chance for people to head to the movies during the school holidays.”
Tickets can be purchased online through Trybooking, children $11 adults $16.