St Paul’s Collegiate School will be a destination for young athletes if a new high performance sports programme takes off as planned.
The school is focusing on the coaching and development of its student athletes with the new programme, kicked off by principal Grant Lander.
In All Blacks style, Lander took a sabbatical last year and looked at the sports set-up at several Australian schools, aiming to bring those ideas back to St Paul’s to enhance the sports programme.
He found the coaching and culture were the main differences, and helped keep students interested in school, and their school work.
"We had a bit of a review of our sports last year, and I had a sabbatical where I went to Australia to see some high performance schools.
"Part of my focus was how they achieve engagement in schools with the young people. One of the things I noticed quickly was we need to be able to play to their interests, be that sports, or whatever.
"I saw some pretty professional approaches in those schools. In a result of that, we decided to put a bit more emphasis into raising performance of our sports teams."
The first step in achieving those goals was to improve coaching, bringing in people with knowledge and skill, as well as respect from their past in the sport.
A new partnership with Fraser Tech Rugby Club has seen first teamers Latu Talakai and Sam Christie involved with coaching at the school, and a premier rugby game was hosted at St Paul’s for the first time at the weekend.
Another partnership with Midlands Hockey sees the organisation based at St Paul’s, and in turn the school receives better coaching for their developing talents.
Football, netball, cricket and rowing are also seeing the standard of coaching improve, particularly at junior levels.
Year nine and 10 students also have the chance for more intensive physical education classes, including sessions with a new preparation and conditioning coach, Michiel Badenhorst, and life coach Tama Dean.
"We have had Michiel come over from South Africa, and he’s taken the rugby team in preseason and helped build their conditioning.
"He also takes sessions at 6am for people wanting to work on conditioning, that sort of thing. We're aiming for a total, professional focus on our sporting programme."
That should bring more athletes to the school, according to Lander, as young students aim for professional sports careers.
Several big name athletes have come from St Paul’s, including Daniel Vettori, and Lander expects more to come in the future.
Pro sport isn't the only future goal, with American universities always scouting for potential sports people to join their programmes.
"We've had one year 12 boy, he’s been approached by two Ivy League schools because of his efforts in rowing.
"If he keeps his grades up, they're interested in him when he finishes school. That’s the sort of thing we'd love to see people going and doing.
"There are so many things you can do in the world these days through sport. It used to be you'd finish school, go to university, and see what happens.
"Now you can go to America, Europe, wherever, and have a future in sport. We want to build on that."
