Taupo Camp - Sunday 4/3/2007

[Unfortunately the photos embedded in this article are no longer accessible so I've removed the broken image links. All photosfrom the day are in the link at the bottom of the article - Doug August 2020]

7am - "Everyone up" shouts Mr Ballard. I'd been awake for a while listening to Sunday slowly coming to life (referring to the birds chirping and a tiny bit of traffic noise) and was up like a shot. Remarkably the boys weren't too slow getting up either. I enquired about how Jeremy felt after eating almost 2 litres of ice cream in last night’s contest. “Not bad, I chucked about half of it up last night before I went to bed. Stomach still feels full though”. Gross.
After breakfast Mr Ballard informed the team “pack your gear, tidy up this place then get into your doboks and get over to the gym by 8.15am”

Injuries There have been a couple of injuries in the last week. Paige was hit by a car on Tuesday when crossing the road from her school bus. She has a fractured arm (in plaster from hand to above her elbow) and a broken nose plus bruising. Candice dislocated her shoulder in Saturday while sparring so she was wearing a sling last night and today. And let’s not forget Mr Burr’s KO (read about that in the previous article below). Today he was in a neck brace as well as his dobok but it didn’t slow him down, much to some of the parent’s consternation!

We learnt that he'd shared his ambulance ride to Rotorua hospital with the man with a broken arm who had been hit by a truck, along with his wife who was killed. "He was pretty drugged up on pain killers" said Mr Burr. The accident was all over the papers and we read about it on the internet. The accident happened only a few hundred metres up Spa road from where we were at camp.

On this morning’s agenda was power and specialty (overhead kick) for those involved in these events with those not doing this practicing patterns and sparring drills.

Mr Pellow was up before 5am and drive down for the morning’s training. He hadn’t been able to make it on Friday night and Saturday due to a funeral he attended. Everyone really appreciated this effort!

Next was what everyone had been looking forward to (not). Fitness test time! Taken by Mr Burr (even worse). “What we’re doing today are 4/5/4’s” said Mr Burr. Stewie (above) made some smart comment (like usual) and Mr Burr retorted “ok then, it’s now 4/5/6’s!”. After an explanation of how to do it, with lots of questions asked to burn time they were into it. I took a few pictures while the faces reddened but the team didn’t really didn’t look too bad. Those of us sitting down on the sidelines thought it looked pretty easy really. Ah..hem.

Back over to the cookhouse for the final pep-talk from Mr Ballard, Mr Pellow, Mr Burr and Mr Yates. The coaches were pretty impressed with the sparring on Saturday and, given the last camp was only 3 weeks ago, thought the team had come a long way. They also congratulated the team for their co-operation, support of each other and team spirit which they felt was pretty awesome.
Mr Ballard announced that Ross Black, who has continued to train with the team since the first camp had improved to a level that they felt he had earned a place on the team to take the remaining position in hyper-weight sparring.

Also announced was the boy’s team patterns selection. Confirmed were Jeremy Hanna, Matt Hartigan, Johs van Pierce, Jason Fraser, Ethan Parker. And still to battle it out for the 6th man position are Shane Black and Brad Wickman.

Just in case the team were feeling a bit cocky Mr Yates handed out the raffle tickets (150 each) for all to sell prior to the April camp. This is to raise funds to pay for the apparel. Paige was chastised for being the last person to get her documentation in – she had left it at home by mistake - and Mr Burr was also chastised by parents for not looking after himself and resting up.

We all headed for home – now raining – tired, a bit sore, but all eager to return again for more in a month’s time.

The weekend's photos are here.