July 2019

junior a


Auckland Schools’ Debating Junior Championship

On Saturday 28 July, Lynfield had four Junior teams compete in the ASD Junior Championship Tournament. There were three rounds of debates that covered topics such as politics, BYOD and foreign languages. The teams all won two of their three debates where they competed against teams from schools all over Auckland. The top eight teams (those on the most wins and Speaker points) advanced to the Quarterfinals held at Auckland University on Sunday.

Lynfield 1 (Sarka Ludvigova, Eesha Mahimkar, Uday Jain Leigh Hine) was the only Lynfield team to advance to the Quarterfinals, due to having the highest Speaker points of the Lynfield teams. The other teams placed well and we are very pleased with their performance on the day.

The Final Rounds

On Sunday, Lynfield 1 won their Quarter-final against Auckland Grammar, where they successfully negated the moot “This house would require high school students to fill out report cards for teachers”.

Gaining momentum, in the Semi-final, they successfully defeated Westlake Boys, where they negated the moot “This house believes that athletes are poor role models for children”.

Advancing to the Grand-final, in an extremely close debate against the top breaking team Diocesan, they lost in a 3/2 split decision. (very close).

Congratulations to Sarka, Leigh, Eesha and Uday for placing second in the tournament. Well done to Uday Jain for placing among the Top 10 Speakers of the tournament.

This team just went from strength to strength in this tournament and we are so proud of them.
Junior Championship Tournament wrap up:

LYNFIELD 1: Sarka, Eesha, Uday and Leigh (Year 10s) 2nd Place

LYNFIELD 2: Sophie Yang, Stanley Long and Ananya Nandkarni (Year 10s) 11th place

LYNFIELD 3: Carey Chen, Vishwa Jayswal and Jessie Chen (Year 10s) 15th place

LYNFIELD 4: Hazel Fleming, Kate Kestle, Heather Mitchinson (Year 9) 10th place

TOP 10 SPEAKER AWARD: Uday Jain:  7th place

junior c junior b
 


Basketball Season Ends

The season ended for this sport this week. Both our Senior Girls team and our Open A Senior Boys team played in zone finals this week. The girls defeated St Dominics 31-26 making our girls winners of the top West Auckland grade.

Our Open A Boys played St Pauls in a very intense and close game. Although we were down at the end of the 3rd quarter our boys fought hard to narrow the gap but couldn’t quite finish off, resulting in St Pauls winning by only 5 points.

However, there is much excitement among our basketballers as our top senior girls’ and boys’ teams have created Lynfield College history. As far as we can tell this is the first time that both teams have qualified for the Greater Auckland Champs! This tournament is open only to the top two senior teams from each of the four basketball zones. Greater Auckland Champs will be held at Pulman Park, Papakura on Wednesday 14 and Thursday 15 August.

Thank you to Ron Delgrosso for his fabulous action shots.

Visit the Lynfield College Sports facebook page for more detail and photos.
 

basketball b basketball a basketball c basketball d
basketball e basketball f
 


The 2019 Lynfield College Ball

With the magical theme of Narnia, this student highlight of the year held at the Pullman Hotel will be remembered by all as a fantastic evening. Thank you to the Ball Committee for the enormous amount of work they did in preparation for this fabulous event.

Congratulations to this year’s award winners:
Queen of the Ball (Year 13): Jessika Varney
Belle of the Ball (Year 12): Jonni Ryan-Gordan 
Best Dancer: Rosalyn Fononga
Best Dressed Female: Sarah Niumata
Best Dressed Teacher: Alannah Morris
King of the Ball (Year 13): Aaron Tahu
Beau of the Ball (Year 12): Nathan Lockhart
Cutest Couple – Melissa Nicholson and Hayden Lapwood
Best Dressed Male: Harsh Sharma
 
Visit White Door Photography to see more from their gallery of almost 10,000 images! Below is just a very small sample of our students enjoying a great night.
 
j ball f ball g
ball c ball b ball a ball d
ball i ball h
 
 
octo a


Results from World Schools' Debating

Lynfield College Year 13 student Kyus Rodger, who was selected for the New Zealand Debating team, competed at the World's Schools' Debating Championship 2019 in two separate tournaments over an exciting three-week trip run by New Zealand Schools' Debating. The first was a warm-up ‘mini- world’ tournament held in Chennai, India; and the official WSDC 2019 tournament was held in Bangkok, Thailand.

Kyus and his teammates (William Price of Westlake Boys’ High School; Mitchell Palmer of Auckland Grammar School; Harper Smith of Waikato Diocesan School for Girls; and Grace Baylis of Macleans College), performed very well in both tournaments. Here are the results:

Mini Worlds: Chennai India

Team New Zealand reached the Quarterfinals of the tournament and ranked an impressive four speakers in the top ten: Mitchell Palmer who was seventh equal, Harper Smith who was sixth and Grace Baylis who was fifth. Will Price was named Best Speaker at the tournament.

World Schools Debating Championship 2019: Bangkok Thailand

Team NZ had a fantastic tournament and are very proud of the team. They ended the tournament as octo-finalists (top 16). All five speakers also ranked in the top 100 in the world, and Will Price finished fourteeth equal. Just as importantly they all worked very hard and debated excellently.
 

octo m octo n

Kyus said his world's debating experience has been an amazing opportunity and it was such a great trip. He’s glad he got to represent the west to the world. Kyus' very supportive family, including mum Anita, dad Alan, and his grandparents have been closely following and supporting Kyus from Auckland have said that it was an "Unreal experience for the whole team." They thanked members of Lynfield staff for laying the foundation for helping to get him there.

Kyus has been involved in Debating at Lynfield since Year 9. He is a gifted speaker and was selected as a Premier Debater in Year 10. He helped win the Premier Junior title in 2016, was selected for the Auckland Schools' Debating Development Squad in 2017 and was on the winning team in the Seasonal's tournament in 2018. He helped win the Mount Maunganui Exchange debates for the last three years. This year, he was selected for the Auckland Regional team that came second in New Zealand. He is the first Lynfield debater to compete on an New Zealand team.

We are very proud of Kyus and his success.



Huge Success for our Year 12 German Class

 
Congratulations to Rosalyn Fononga and Joanna Wu (Year 12) who have both been awarded a scholarship to travel to Germany in January 2020. They will participate in a 3-week German language course at the Goethe Institut in Frankfurt where they will attend German lessons in the mornings. They will also be involved in cultural activities with international students of German in the afternoons.

William Maggs (Year 12) has been invited to attend the New Zealand German Language Olympics in Wellington at the end of July. He is going to participate in language workshops and the second round of scholarship interviews.

Lynfield College has been awarded 12 scholarships to travel to Germany since 2007. All students who study German in Year 12 will get the opportunity to apply for a range of scholarships to spend time in Germany and to represent New Zealand and Lynfield College.

german scholars


Visual Arts Week 2019: Arts Career Pathways

We had two guests visited Lynfield College on Friday 5 July, to talk to our senior Visual Arts students about study options and career pathways within the creative industry, Michelle Singh from Media Design School and Catherine Cutler from Auckland University.

Both covered study options, course requirements, portfolios, open days and events held at the school. They also showed examples of their students work, and talked about their institutions websites which offered more information that students could visit if they were interested in studying at either the Media Design School or Auckland University.

Students asked questions about specific programs and received Prospectus documents from both institutions.

media speaker uni speaker

 

Visual Arts Week 2019: Pacific Mamas Workshop

Lynfield College students and our guests from Waikowhai Intermediate experienced Pacific customs and myths through interactive storytelling, songs and dance.

Our tutors Turatini and Jarcinda took students on a journey through different cultural practices and Cook Island origin myths. They also learnt how to play traditional Cook Island drums. It was an enriching, fun and rewarding experience to learn about the origins of different Pacific cultures.

mamas g mamas d mamas e
mamas c
mamas a mamas f mamas b


Visual Arts Week 2019: Guest Speakers

Guest speakers Tom Hackshaw and Michel Mulipola were invited to speak to our senior arts students about their art and the processes and techniques they use along with art trends and their career paths.

Tom Hackshaw spoke about his experiences of studying art at Elam Fine Art School, Auckland University. Tom showed students some of his art projects during his degree course at Elam. He worked with renowned Maori artist Michael Parakowhai and was also a teacher at Elam Fine Art School for a year.

Michel Mulipola spoke about his many passions those included creating drawings and illustrations for comics, school journals, graphic novels, of being a professional wrestler and gamer.

speakers c speakers b
speakers a


Visual Arts Week 2019: The Korowai Project

As part of our Visual Arts Week students from Waikowhai Intermediate and Blockhouse Bay Intermediate along with our Lynfield College students worked together to paint feathers for the creation of a korowai artwork based on our school values.

Preparation began early with our Year 9 and 10 students cutting out the cardboard feathers. Then all the students worked together to paint the card feathers which will be attached to a cloak cut out of canvas. Throughout the year our students will continue to work towards adding to the korowai until its completion.

feather a feather b
feather c feather d
 

Visual Arts Week 2019: Visual Arts Competition

Arts and Cultural Captain Nene Matsuki presented each of the Visual Arts Competition prizewinners their prize packs at the different assemblies during Artsweek.

Theme for the arts competition was “If you could invent one thing to save planet earth from global warming, what would it be?” The inventions were both imaginative and fantastical …

THE PRIZEWINNERS WERE:

Senior first place prize winner, Year 12 Ali Ashgar 12WN

Junior first place prize winner, Year 9 Vickie Jiang 9PT

Runner up prize winner, Noah de Heer 11LF

Runner up prize winner, Rina Zhang 11PL

art awards a art awards c art awards b art awards d
Ali Asghar Rina Zhang Noah de Heer Vickie Jiang
  
 

Debating Update

Below are the details of the teams moving from the preliminary to the final rounds in the Auckland School’s Debating Tournament. This is only the second time Lynfield has reached this level of competition in every grade.

JUNIOR OPEN: (3rd in a grade of 118 teams)
LYNFIELD 1: Sophie Yang (Year 10), Ananya Nadkarni (Year 10), Oliver Pracey (Year 10) and Stanley Long (Year 10).

JUNIOR OPEN: (14th in a grade of 80)
LYNFIELD 2: Sourav Shastri (Year 12), Vidit Chaudhary (Year 13), Harsh Sharma (Year 12), and Abhay Verma (Year 12). All these students are new to debating this year.

ADVANCED OPEN: (2nd in a grade of 35)
LYNFIELD 1: Joseph Hisayasu (Year 13), Sarah Young (Year 13), Kendall D’Souza (Year 12), and Aashish Ramanlal (Year 11).

PREMIER JUNIOR: (for students from Year 9 – 11) (2nd in a grade of 36)
LYNFIELD 1: Jasmine Pickston (Year 11), Eliana Competente (Year 11) and Michael Jury (Year 11).

Jasmine and Michael have also been selected for the Auckland School’s Debating Development Squad and will receive extra training by University debaters, just as Raymond, Isha and Kyus are having to prepare them for a possible Auckland Regional team selection next year.

PREMIER ADVANCED: (6th in a grade of 29 teams)
LYNFIELD 1: Kyus Rodger (Year 13), Raymond Feng (Year 13), Michael Howell (Year 13) and Isha Ramanlal (Year 11).

kyus a kyus b
Kyus in action Auckland Blue Team
kyus c
Team New Zealand 2019 left to right: Mitchell Palmer (Auckland Grammar School), Grace Baylis (Macleans College), William Price (Westlake Boys’ High School) (Captain)
Harper Smith (Waikato Diocesan School for Girls) and Kyus Rodgers (Lynfield College)

 

Legal Profession Schools Project

Lynfield College and especially the careers department were delighted to host ten legal professionals from the Legal Professional Schools Project on Tuesday 2 July. Among them was Lynfield past student Right Honourable Dame Helen Winkelmann, Chief Justice of New Zealand who met with our senior students for a fun and informative discussion as to how the study of law at University might be achieved by our students.

This opportunity came about following a number of public statements by the Chief Justice, as to the extent to which children from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds struggle to gain entry to our law schools and the detrimental flow-on effect that has on the law profession. Subsequently a number of studies have confirmed that very few children from low decile schools make it to law school, and of those that do, only a very few excel.

This has resulted in a group of legal professionals who have identified the need for the legal profession to have a diversity of views and backgrounds within the law profession.

We look forward to ongoing engagement with this project.

legal b legal d
legal a
legal e legal c
News & Events