Hard work leads to impressive results at Auckland Junior Volleyball Championships
Posted on November 21, 2023
The Macleans College junior boys’ and girls’ volleyball teams recently competed at the Auckland Junior Championships.
This is the biggest event that College Sport runs during the year, featuring 48 schools for both the boys’ and girls’ tournament spread between Waiuku and Mahurangi.
The boys’ team had their second-best result ever finishing in sixth place and only losing narrowly to Westlake Boys’ High School in the quarterfinal who went on to reach the final. Their best game was against Onehunga High School who, like Macleans College, had played in the premier competition during the season but they had not beaten before. Still, a very close game that reached 23-all before Grayson Shin (Mansfield House) put away a brilliant spike followed by an ace on the service. Grayson went on to make the tournament team, which was very well deserved. The team was well led by Wesley Lau (Kupe) and all members played at a level much beyond their ages.
The girls’ team began with three very close games that could have gone either way and they almost beat premier team Kelston Girls’ College. They then won against Avondale College to qualify for Division 2. The team then had two very good wins against Howick College and Glendowie College which ultimately placed them fourth in Division 2, and a lot better than the previous few years results. The standout players during the year were Teodora Cosma (Rutherford) and Zita Lio (Hillary), who both led the team by example.
These results have come through a lot of hard work. There has not been a week during the school year where there has not been either a training or a match somewhere. Three coaches have put in hours and hours of work, two of whom are ex-students, and their work has not gone unnoticed. Thank you very much to Randy Jiang (Te Kanawa House 2014 – 2018), Dominic Thompson (Rutherford House 2016 – 2020) and Sinead Olliver.
Volleyball Girls Junior A
- Teodora Cosma
- Christy Feng (Rutherford)
- Zita Lio
- Karen Lu (Batten)
- Elaina Thomason (Te Kanawa)
- Amber Thompson (Kupe)
- Alethea Wong (Te Kanawa)
- Ellen Wu (Batten)
- Claire Zou (Te Kanawa)
Volleyball Boys Junior A
- James Hong (Rutherford)
- Ali Hussain (Rutherford)
- Wesley Lau
- Jason Liu (Rutherford)
- Owen Liu (Snell)
- Ashton Phillips (Kupe)
- Grayson Shin
- Aaroosh Shukla (Rutherford)
- Austin Wang (Batten)
- Brendon Zhang (Kupe)
