Category: Uncategorised

Interhouse Athletics Interhouse Athletics at Northwood on Wednesday 22 August took on an Olympic atmosphere. The athletes were spurred on by their enthusiastic house compatriots, with the high jump, in particular, getting the crowd clapping!

At a pre-deciding event on Tuesday 21 August, two long standing records were broken by Phikolomzi Sobahle who achieved 12,45m in the U16 Triple Jump and Ross Muil who threw 52,23m in the U15 javelin.

The C. Hansen Memorial Trophy for Junior Victor Ludorum was won by Ross Muil and the  Pevsner Trophy went to Dale van der Merwe who was the Senior Victor Ludorum.

The day was keenly supported by the boys and efficiently orchestrated by the staff with Crusaders House proving victorious once again.

The World Knowledge Olympiad sponsored by the University of the Free State was written nationally and Northwood entered 43 boys into the competition. Delon Baker of Grade 8 came 3rd for Grade 8 in KZN and won R700. In the Grade 9 section, Sergio Da Silva, came 2nd second in KZN, winning the Silver Award and R900.

Northwood are very proud of grade 11 player, Matthew de Sousa, who was recently selected for the South African U18B hockey side at the U18 Inter-Provincial Hockey Tournament in Johannesburg.   In this year’s Indoor Hockey season, Matthew, the captain, never lost a game!

Steve McManus, also in grade 11, was the top goal scorer at the same tournament.

Stedon Venter, in grade 11 at Northwood, fought his way into the South African Judo Team on Friday, 10 August 2012. He will be representing his country at the Junior African Championships to be held in Botswana in October 2012.

Update:

Stedon came 4^th against 11 other countries at the Junior African Championships held in Botswana in August and has been selected to represent South Africa at the Zone Six Youth Games to be held in Lusaka, Zambia from 04 December to 17 December 2012.

 

The Northwood Brass Band, made up entirely of school boys, has played at three high profile events over as many weeks.

Mrs Gail Teunissen, the Headmistress of Addington Primary School, and an educator of 42 years experience, was paraded into the school and serenaded by the Northwood drummers to mark her retirement on Tuesday 31 July 2012.  This was a bitter-sweet affair, celebrating the incredible life of service “Mrs T” has given to the school and community.

There was little room to rest as eleven of the band members moved straight into rehearsal for the Corobrick Orchestra 2012, performance held on Sunday 5 August – a massed orchestra put together every year at UKZN Westville, under the baton of well-known conductor Richard Cock. A challenging program including classical and popular pieces, allowed the band boys to really show their talent, and earned the band and Northwood a commendation from the Maestro himself.

As if this wasn’t enough, the whole band joined forces with the Brass Band from Ferrum High in Newcastle on 11 August 2012, to perform at the well-supported Highland Games up at Fort Nottingham in the KZN Midlands. Performing both marching and concert displays, the combined band performed incredibly well, giving a great showing next to the SA Army Band and the KZN Pipe Bands, even receiving an invitation to perform at the annual “Music from Scotland” evening at the end of September.  The band ended a very successful weekend with a snowball fight on the way home.

Assembly at Northwood School on Friday 17 August 2012 saw the inaugural presentation of the Bamboo Sushi Lounge’s Excellence Awards. Every term Bamboo Sushi Lounge will honour thirty of Northwood’s top contributors with a certificate which entitles them to a term’s “eat as much as you want” contract at the Umhlanga restaurant. Albert Liu, an old boy, saw this as a fitting way to encourage the learners to excel and to recompense his high school alma mater. This term saw the top three academic learners in each grade receive certificates along with rugby and honours recipients, Science Expo and World Knowledge Olympiad winners, Chess achievers and First Aid Service contributors.

On Friday 17 August the Northwood chess team competed in the Durban and Districts High School Chess League Finals held at Clifton. On the day of the tournament, the boys made a conscious decision to bring the trophy home with one of the boys saying, “It’s Mr Jordan’s last year and we are taking the trophy for him!” Compared to Glenwood Boys High School’s team of ten, which included five grade 12 boys and an additional five reserves, the Northwood Chess Team appeared inexperienced.

The team of three grade 11’s, two grade 10’s, two grade 9’s and three new grade 8 players surprised Glenwood, in the third round, with a victory of 34 out of 40 and a three point lead. After Round 3, the tournament director (Glenwood’s Mr Jonathan Bentham) decided that Northwood was the clear cut winner and that there was no need to have more than four rounds. He also made a point of mentioning that it took ten years for Northwood to beat them!

The final results were as follows: Round 1 – Northwood beat St Henry’s Marist College 10-NIL, Round 2 Northwood beat Westville Boys 10-NIL, Round 3 Northwood beat Glenwood 5,5 – 4,5 and finally in Round 4 Northwood beat DHS 8,5 – 1,5. Northwood’s winning team, listed as per their board numbers, was: 1. Yasteel Devnarian, 2. Luke Joseph, 3. Thomas Meadows, 4. Yetish Ramsurrup, 5. Shayur Hansraj, 6. Kyran Appana, 7. James Meadows, 8. Taish Ramkisson, 9. Ukyle Bezuidenhoud and 10. Deshaj Parthab.

CONGRATULATIONS to the following boys who have been selected for the KZN side for 2012 and will represent KZN in Cape Town from 15 to 21 December at the Junior Chess Championships (SA Trials 2012):

Shayur Hansraj (tied 1st place at the Closed U16) U16A

Kyran Appanna (U16A)

James Meadows (U14B)

Yasteel Devnarrian (U18A)

Ukyle Bezuidenhout (RESERVE)

Taish Ramkisson (RESERVE)

Northwood’s 1st soccer team played Peterhouse Boys from Zimbabwe on Saturday, 18 August 2012 at Michaelhouse. A great free kick from Cameron Du Plessis put Northwood on the scoreboard 1-0 at half time. Peterhouse soon came back with a great goal in the 2nd half to make it 1-1. Stephen McManus scored late in the 2nd half with a left footed volley to win this competitive game 2-1 for Northwood.

Northwood played against Glenwood in the final of the KZN Schools Hockey Night Series league in May. In typical final style both teams played tentative hockey and it was obvious that neither team wanted to make the error that could cost them the final. After the first two chukka’s the teams were at a stalemate and the game looked like going into extra time.

It was Northwood who started the third and final chukka with the greater purpose and some great play down the right hand channel resulted in the first penalty corner of the game. In this format of the game penalty corners are replaced by a one on one between an attacker and the goal keeper. It was at this stage that the first hero of the day, Matthew de Sousa stepped up to skilfully eliminate the Glenwood keeper and finish calmly to give Northwood the lead.

Glenwood started to play with more purpose after the goal and eventually managed to earn a penalty corner after an error from the Northwood defenders. Kyle Pillay was outstanding in his defence and pulled off two brilliant saves to keep the score at 1 – 0.

Northwood showed heart and passion to see out the final few minutes to be crowned the 2012 KZN Schools Night League Champions.

It was a fantastic all round team performance.

At the start of the 2012 rugby season, the Northwood U15A rugby boys were presented with the following challenge: to win the matches they lost last year – namely Hilton, DHS, Michaelhouse and Glenwood, and to be remembered by all as one of the “greatest U15A rugby teams” to play for Northwood School.  Eleven fixtures and one tournament later these boys can look back and be very proud of achieving these goals with only the loss to Glenwood standing in the way.  After many months of training and working towards their goals the boys managed to play eleven fixtures with eight wins, beating proud rugby schools such as Kearsney, Westville, Hilton, DHS and Michaelhouse to name a few along the way and managed to be placed third overall at this year’s Port Natal rugby festival. An outstanding set of results.

To me these boys will always be remembered as “warriors”, “fighters” and most importantly as the “greatest rugby team I have ever been privileged enough to coach” say Gavin Sweet.  With all the politics and negativity seen in the media recently with regards to school sport these days, it is so warming to notice a group of boys who passionately play the sport they all love with their hearts worn on their sleeves and are only interested in making their families and school proud.  These boys deserve all the accolades and praise as through all their hard work, determination and natural ability none of the above would have been possible.

There were many highlights this season; the 7-0 victory over Westville on our main field under lights, our excellent defence which kept the score line 8-7 against Hilton, the boys excellent all round performance against DHS to end the match 17-7 in our favour, our close 0-3 loss to College in a game that could of easily gone either way and the evenly matched contest against Kearsney which was hard fought and ended a well deserved 13-12 win at the end.  These are just to name a few achievements that make this group of boys so special and an asset to Northwood School rugby.