NCEA at school

Mulan restarts school next Tuesday at Westlake Girls; this year she's in Year 11 doing NCEA 1.

She does six subjects -- three compulsory and three optional.  Her three compulsory ones are English, maths and science, and several months ago, before the Covid lockdown, she chose her optional ones as PE, music and dance.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), a couple of days ago Mulan got an email from the school saying that they couldn't figure out a subject timetable that fitted her preferences, and would she mind changing her plans and taking a different subject.

Apparently, music and dance clash; they'd already enrolled her for music but she needed to choose another subject to replace dance (or drop music).  They suggested that she choose quickly as places were going fast.

I have no idea why the timetable designers set things up so that music and dance clash -- surely those are subjects that would commonly go together?

Anyway, Mama was happy, as she'd preferred that Mulan not do dance.  She'd hoped that Mulan would take more desk-based subjects and was against her doing all three of PE, music and dance.  (My advice had been that Mulan may as well do subjects that she enjoys and can get passionate about.)

Mulan had no strong preference for any other subject, so it was up to Mama and me to make the decision.

We suggested accounting.  I took accounting right through school and also first year uni.  In my opinion, accounting is the school subject that has had the most practical use for me post-school.  Without school accounting I would have struggled with the bookkeeping and tax returns for my (and Mama's) self-employed work.

So, it's now all official: for school Mulan's doing NCEA 1 in English, maths, science, accounting, music and PE.

She'll probably look at joining the school orchestra (cello), and maybe do school sports like athletics, swimming and netball.  (All Covid-permitting!)

Out of school she's also doing dance (ballet advanced 1 and contemporary level 6 exams, and performances/shows), music (private recorder lessons and concert band flute), athletics (competitions) and swimming (lessons).  She delivers local papers once a week.

All this should keep her busy and out of mischief this year.

Athletics Interprovincials

And back to athletics again!

Similar to last season, Mulan was again selected into the Auckland team for the Interprovincials (IPs).

This season it's a bit different though, and for two reasons:

Firstly, she's now in the Under 16/Under 18 competition (last season it was Grade 12 and 13).  They run it slightly differently, and it's a more relaxed event.

Secondly, due to Covid they decided to make it a virtual competition.  This means that the provincial teams are not meeting together for a single in-person competition, but instead are using the results from their local competitions to allocate points and decide placings.  

Each athlete is selected for three events, and competitors choose which local competitions they compete at for Interprovincial points.

Under 16s have to compete in at least one track and one field event, and Mulan was chosen by the Auckland managers for triple jump, shot put and 400m.

This was a bit of a surprise, as Mulan does better in long jump than shot put, and hurdles rather than 400m (and she hadn't been training at all for 400m).  But as it's a points competition we guess that the points are skewed that way.

This is all leading up to say that Mulan did her first IP event on Saturday, throwing the shot put at the McKinnon Shield competition.  The results are here.

Her best throw of 7.79m was okay, though a significant decrease after her huge throws at the Colgate Games.  (We reasoned that holding up her flute all week probably wasn't good shot put preparation!)

Now with Omicron Covid in the community and New Zealand back to red light restrictions, the upcoming athletics competitions are changing.  We're still waiting on Athletics Auckland to set the schedule and let us know how and when Mulan might fit in her triple jump and 400m.

West City Youth Concert Band

Switching from athletics to music, for the past five days the girls have been fulltime involved in band camp.

Back in December, Mulan and Miya signed up for the West City Youth Concert Band camp.  It's not really a camp, as they don't stay overnight.  But it was a busy four full days of music-making (Tuesday until last night).

Since it's a concert band, Mulan played her flute (rather than recorder or cello, which are probably her first and second instruments).  But that was ideal, as she hasn't had much chance to play flute lately and it was nice to get back into it again.  Miya played her clarinet.

They sent us the music while we were away on holiday (asking the kids to get familiar with it before the camp started).  That meant that when we got back last Sunday evening Mulan and Miya had just over a day to try out the pieces.  And they did amazingly well to get themselves sorted, working on the pieces together for most of the time.

So, from Tuesday until yesterday my job was simply to drive the girls out to West Auckland (about 25 min away) each morning and then pick them up each afternoon.  I wasn't allowed to know too many details until the final concert last night at 7pm.

(Mulan is on the left with the flutes, while Miya is on the right with the clarinets.)

And wow, the concert was very impressive and thoroughly enjoyable.  Alongside playing several pieces together, the musicians divided into three groups (marching, composition and jazz) and performed those.  Mulan and Miya both chose the marching group.  Marching and playing at the same time is surprisingly challenging to coordinate, and it was a great introduction for them.  At the concert we watched a pre-recorded video of them doing some synchronised movements while playing.

Here's one of the pieces the band played, The Great Locomotive Chase.

We're now looking into whether it's possible for the girls to join the Youth Band itself this year.

Athletics at Colgate Games in Wellington

We're back from our family summer holiday travels.

This year we were away for 12 days, mainly in Wellington and mainly for athletics.  I'll write another post about our touristy travels, but this one's about the girls' athletic competition.

So, the Colgate Games is the big national competition for 7-14-years-olds, with one held in the North Island and one in the South Island each year.  Last year we went to Inglewood, while this year we were in Wellington (we haven't yet tried the South Island competition; maybe next year!?).

The North Island competition results are here.  (The South Island results are here.)

Miya:

Miya signed up for the Grade 11 high jump, shot put and discus.

High jump is Miya's favourite event, and we were all delighted that she got a finalist ribbon for her 6th= placing (out of 23).  (Interestingly, her performance would have earned her a bronze medal at the South Island competition.)

Here she is jumping 1.25m, a new PB for her.  Her three attempts at 1.30m were all close, and no doubt she'll get it soon.

Miya's shot put of 7.24m, which earned her 12th place (out of 19), was satisfying and not far off her competition PB of 7.35m.  She was a little disappointed she wasn't closer to her practice throws of 8m, but that'll happen one day.

Finally, Miya threw the discus out 15.74m, earning her 14th place (out of 23).  Again, while it was a good throw, it wasn't quite at her best of 17.12m.

Mulan:

Mulan had a busy weekend, competing in the Grade 14 80m hurdles, long jump, discus, shot put and 4x100m relay.

Mulan ran well in her hurdles heat and qualified for the final.  Her 14.71 in the final was a new PB, earning her 8th place (out of 13) and a finalist ribbon.  She's in lane 2:

The swirling winds made long jumping tough; Mulan's first jump was into a head wind of 1.6m/s while her third jump had a tail wind of 2.1m/s.  Despite the challenges Mulan jumped well, and her first jump of 4.39m was good enough to earn her 10th place (out of 26).

Mulan's discus throw of 22.76m was another PB for her, and earned her 13th place (out of 18).  With practice throws of almost 25m, Mulan was hoping for a bit more, but we can't complain about a PB!

Mulan had three awesome throws in the shot put, with her best of 8.63m earning her 14th place (out of 18) and far surpassing her previous PB of 8.02m.

(Unfortunately I don't have a video of this, and I didn't get to see it, as I was on the other side of the stadium watching Miya's high jump.)

Finally, Mulan was part of the Takapuna Club's Grade 14 4x100m relay team.  I was also involved with this a bit, coaching them with their baton passes.  With one 12-year-old and one 13-year old, the girls did amazingly well in their heat to qualify for the final.  The final was one of those nail biters, with Wellington just beating them by 7 hundredths of a second.  No worries, 6th place and the finalist ribbon were well deserved.  The videoing (by me) isn't great, but you can (mostly) see Takapuna in lane 7:

Sharks!

On Sunday, we spent the day sailing the seas on a friend's boat.

Okay, so it was more like the Hauraki Gulf, and it was a motor boat instead of a sailing ship.  But to us landlubbers it was essentially the same, bobbing about on the water for several hours.

From Westhaven Marina, we zipped up past Rangitoto and Motutapu, then by Waiheke and to Pakihi (I think).

While we lounged about, our friends did some fishing and scuba diving.  The gutted fish attracted a couple of sharks.