Auckland Volleyball Championships 2022
Posted on April 11, 2022
The Premier Boys’ and Girls’ Volleyball team competed at the Auckland Championships last week at the Bruce Pulman Arena in Takanini.
This is the biggest tournament that College Sport runs involving 38 girls’ teams and 40 boys’ teams from Waiuku to Orewa.
College Sport should be congratulated for undertaking this organisation under the current health situation dealing with nine separate courts from 8 am until 9 pm for three days and only having 200 people inside at any one time. It was a military operation undertaken and always accompanied with a smile.
The Macleans College teams did very well and both achieved better results than last year.
The boys’ team qualified for division one after some excellent results in the South Eastern Zone that began in the first week of school. They only narrowly lost to Rangitoto College who were the eventual winners and last year’s National Champions. The team eventually finished 13th with a brilliant last game where they beat Massey High School. Edward Taliai (Hillary House) had his best game ever, ably supported by Aiden Zhang (Kupe) and Leo Liao (Kupe).
The girls’ team had qualified for division two after some very close losses during the zone tournaments. They won their first four matches to qualify for the semi-finals and lost to Baradene College in a match of very high quality. The team eventually came 4th behind Hillary College where at ‘10 all’ in the deciding set the match could have gone either way. The team was exceptionally well led by Lize-Mari Beer (Snell).
Two past pupils, Randy Jiang (Te Kanawa 2014 – 2018) and Dominic Thompson (Rutherford 2016 – 2020) put many hours in to coaching these teams for the last few years.
