Back in January, Mulan and Miya joined the West City Youth Concert Band Camp. (Same as last year.) This was four full days of music, ending in a performance on the Friday evening.
Unfortunately I had Covid at the time, so I didn't get to be there, but the concert is now up on YouTube for us all to enjoy.
This year the athletics Auckland Champs are being held over a few weeks.
Yesterday the champs kicked off with the hurdles, which Mulan and Miya both competed in.
Miya came second in the Under 14 Women 80m hurdles:
While Mulan ran her first ever 100m hurdles race, coming third in the Under 18 Women's event:
The results are here.
The NCEA school exam results came through a few days ago. We looked eagerly at Mulan's numbers.
And well done her!
As always, as with any on-the-day performance, be it athletics, music, dance or academics, there were some bits where Mulan performed smoothly, while other bits were a little under what we know she can sometimes do. It's a snapshot in time, not an overall judgement. Important, interesting and useful, but only in its context.
Having said that, overall it was a very satisfying result and something to be proud of. I think it appropriately reflects what Mulan put into it -- her time, effort, seriousness, diligence, and, most importantly, investment-balance with the various other life areas in which Mulan is involved. She put time and effort into her academic studies, but it didn't take over from also equally putting time and effort into her dance, music and athletics, to also achieve well in those.
So, Mulan passed NCEA 1 with excellence endorsement.
She got excellence endorsements in Maths, Science and Music, while she got merit endorsements in English, Accounting and PE.
She passed all 121 credits she sat, with 79 at excellence level and 42 at merit level.
Along with doing NCEA level 1, in her extension English class she sat a level 2 unit. We were delighted that she passed this with merit, as in some of her earlier practices she hadn't done quite so well.
On the other hand, she didn't do quite so well in one of her Accounting units, getting merit rather than excellence. Even though the rest of her Accounting was all excellence, with the bad luck of the points calculation system this dropped her down to merit endorsement overall in Accounting. A little sad after she did so well in her school Accounting results, but that's the idiosyncratic nature of on-the-day performances.
Well done Mulan. Super proud of her!
Our family holiday this summer was down in Whanganui (mostly).
It was just a short trip, leaving on Wednesday 4th and arriving back home on Thursday 12th.
It was Whanganui this year because once again we were at the North Island athletics Colgate Games (like we did last year in Wellington and the year before in Inglewood). This year it was just Miya competing, as Mulan is too old (14 and unders only).
I'll write some more on this post but for now here's the important bits:
Here's Miya coming 4th in the final of the Grade 12 80m hurdles (15.24sec):
And here she is clearing 1.40m in the high jump to come 4th:
Both were new PBs for her. She did the shot put and discus too, but didn't throw as well as she sometimes does. She was also in the club's second relay team for her age, and they came 6th. The results are here.
We just got the result of Miya's music exam.
This year Miya has been working towards her Grade 5 Trinity clarinet exam, and two weeks ago she sat it. It was her first ever music exam (and first ever in our family) so it was a new experience for us all.
The result came in the post, and we were delighted with her mark of 84 (out of 100), which earned her Merit. (Merit is 75-86, and Distinction is 87+.)
Congratulations Miya!
Over the weekend we were down in Inglewood for the New Zealand Secondary Schools Athletics Champs. (And by "we" I mean just Mulan and me; Mama and Miya stayed back home.) This is different from the club national champs, which happen at the end of the season in March.
We left home on Friday morning and arrived back on Sunday evening, the drive each way taking about five hours.
We were there because Mulan had signed up for the junior girls (under 16) 80m hurdles on Saturday morning and triple jump on Sunday morning. (Mulan decided not to compete in the long jump on Friday morning as it clashed with a ballet event happening on Thursday evening.)
It was a very satisfying weekend, with two new PBs (personal bests) in the two events.
First up, into a slight head wind Mulan ran the 80m hurdles in 14.61 seconds. Overall she came 17th out of 22 competitors. What's even more satisfying is that there is still room for improvement; Mulan's main comment was that she jumped too high over the hurdles and this slowed her momentum so she had to add an extra step between the last few hurdles.
Here she is in lane 6, running in the early morning mist:
I didn't get a video of Mulan's triple jump on Sunday, as there were too many people crowding around the runup. You'll just have to trust me that her second jump of 9.70m, also into a slight head wind, was spot on. This earned her 10th place.
But you can see her third jump (which was not so good) on the YouTube livestream. The livestream was focused on the senior competitors, but it just happened to catch Mulan jumping in the background. Having already got 9.70m, Mulan decided to go hard with her final jump, but she slightly twisted her ankle on the hop landing and didn't get a strong jump into the pit. (Her ankle is okay now.)
The competition results are here, and Mulan's personalised results are here.
Saturday was quite busy.
First up, at 8:30am we were in Te Atatu for the Christmas Parade.
West City Youth Concert Band, which Mulan and Miya play in, set up in the park to entertain the crowds. They played one-hour-ish sessions both before and after the parade.
(Mulan's in the flute section on the near side, while Miya is on the far side with the clarinets.)
When it finished at 1pm we headed off to Pakuranga for our usual McKinnon Shield interclub athletics competition. The results are here.
For our first event, Mulan and Miya were in the same 80m hurdles race together. Into a strong head wind they both had pleasing times, with Mulan getting 15.05sec and Miya getting a PB of 16.70sec.
I pushed myself with a 60m sprint (8.64sec) quickly followed by a 100m sprint (13.81sec).
We all then finished off with a triple jump together.
Delightfully, Miya got a new PB of 9.02m while Mulan got a solid 9.41m (again into a head wind). These were good enough to get both Mulan and Miya onto the Auckland ranking lists (they are now on the ranking lists for two events each!). Still recovering from my sprints, I only managed 9.60m.
(At the same time Mulan's two-year-old Under 14 Auckland record of 9.32m was finally beaten; the new record 9.67m could be a challenge for Miya to beat!)
It must have all been too much for me. Arriving home around 6:30pm I had a migraine, which put me out of action for the next 36 hours.
