Hello to you all from the Surfing Academy.
We hope this post finds you and your families in great health.
Wow-what a full-on year.
News regarding the ‘NZ Schools Surfing Champs’.
We are sorry for the lack of communication and we regret to inform you that the Raglan Area Schools Surfing Academy is unable to run the surf comp this year…..so the ‘NZ Schools Surf Champs’ is off.
We have really struggled with this decision and this will be the first time in 21 years where this competition hasn’t run. We haven’t taken this decision lightly.
We are so sorry.
We do believe you deserve the opportunity to have some understanding behind our decision and so we would like to take a little time to communicate our reasoning. Frustratingly we see many ways, we could still run the comp, but in hindsight, we have made some vital mistakes. (We are all wiser in hindsight).
Heath wise, there is no reason why we couldn’t run the event.
We waited for as long as we could to make wise decisions but in reflection, we shouldn’t have.
We should have just organized the comp during the lockdown and once school came back, the Academy should have used our own time to work towards running the comp. In a normal year for the students to run the event, we begin the process within the Academy subject time, from the beginning of term 2.
Unwisely we didn’t.
Unsure of the emotional climate in Raglan and issues surrounding Covid19, we have waited thinking this to be wise. Now, this has placed the Academy in the situation being able to run the comp, but having to pull students out of Academic classes, already under stress, to work on producing the ‘NZ Schools surfing Champs’.
We have battled with our creative thinking, supportive teachers and students, about how we could organize and run the event while maintaining the potential for our students to have the time for their Academic classes. But whichever way we have looked at it, there is just to higher a cost to our student’s time to maintain their academic success.
We understand that a lot of you have been so amped on this event and this just makes us even more gutted. Within the Academy, we have students that have competed in this event from the age of 11, and for the first time in their lives, they had a chance to run the comp being part of the Academy. This will now not be the case.
We also understand that it’s not just the event that’s cool, but that it gives everyone an opportunity to travel away together, as a team and make awesome memories.
We hope you can keep your amp, get creative, and still make opportunities to create some awesome surfing memories.
Again, we are very sorry and hope you can all have an amazing winter surfing as much as you can.
Keep amped.
Best regards,
The Raglan Area Schools ‘Surfing Academy’.
