A team of eight yr 11,12 and 13 students participated in the Upper
North Island Regional Qualifying event for the Hillary Challenge
National final which was held at Riverhead Forest North of Auckland on
Sunday the 27th of July.
We left school very early to compete in the 6-hour event. For the first
section, our team had one hour to collect a number of clues in an
orienteering challlenge, crack the code and then receive the maps for
the mountain bike leg. Our team came flying in way ahead of the other
teams in 23 minutes and set off on their bikes. Trident managed to
haul us in and came in 6 minutes ahead of us. Our team then continued
on with a 4-hour rogaine, where they collected all but one point and
completed 3 mystery challenges all collecting points along the way.
We finished 2nd behind Trident by only 14 points beating the big guns like
Whangarei, Auckland Grammar, St Cuthbert’s and Cambridge High, securing
our place in the National Final at OPC in May 2015.
The team: Matthew Goodall, Luke Horton, Mitchell Murphy, Cole
Edwards, Louise Hinds-Haye, Hannah Chambers, Tayla Cox and Jade Darrah.