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High Notes, Vol 23 No 22, July 29 2022

From the Principal

High Talent

Our first grade Volleyball team won the CHS Knockout Competition last week. Congratulations to – Owen Seong, Paul Fang, Eric Lin, Anthony Hwang, Pattrick Wang, Dimitrios Logothetis, John Liu, Karan Dahiya, Justin Chen, Edward Ly and Oswald Xie.

At the Australian Senior Schools Fencing Championships, Dean Johnsun (10F) won equal Bronze in the Individual Boys Foil event; Jack Wang (11M) and Jarrod Su (11R) won equal Bronze in the Individual Boys Epee event; The Epee Team (Nicholas Chen (12M), Jarrod Su (11R), Jack Wang (11M), Jack Huang (11T) won the Gold in the team event; Yu Ming Lee (12T) won Silver in the Individual Boys Sabre event; and The Sabre team (Yu Ming Lee (12T), Oscar Shi (10S), Samuel Hui (10T),  Sungmin Choi (11S) won the Gold in the team event. Congratulations to all our fencers!

Over the July school holidays, six cadets from SHSCU attended the HQ NSW Australian Army Cadet Brigade 02/22 Cadet Promotion Courses. Congratulations to James Wachsmann, Kenton Liu, Haoran Zhang and Dean Johnsun on passing the Sergeants Course and to Shaleeta Xia and Sophie Jin on passing the Warrant Officer/CUOs Course.

 Kavin Maran (11S) has been selected to receive a Highly commended Award as part of the Minister’s Awards for Excellence in Student Achievement for the study of Tamil. Well done, Kavin. Congratulations to Tim Hanna (12R), Archie Wolifson (12R) and Abrar Chowdhury (11F) have been selected to be in the CHS Debating squad.

The Third Wave

Despite our fatigue in the third year of the pandemic, we must be vigilant during August and September as the third wave of the omicron virus sweeps across our community. Infection numbers and deaths are rising to levels that would have scared us during lockdown. Our school community will protect its students and staff by doing two things – keeping up our vaccination rates for second doses and boosters and by wearing masks indoors. Even though mask wearing is not mandatory it is a strong expectation at High. We want our students at school so they can learn and staff at school so that they can teach them.

Debating, Public Speaking, Rifle Shooting, Cross Country and Fencing Assembly, 2022

Last week we held two assemblies. The second winter sports assembly delivered a stage covered in trophies and triumph for High rifle shooting. My speech to the assembly is reprinted below:

"Special guest Danny Hui (SHS-1998), students, staff and parents, welcome to our annual assembly which at this time each year recognises students and their achievements in debating, public speaking, cross country, rifle shooting and fencing.

"High’s debating program has been one of our co-curricular strengths for many years. I want to thank Madeleine Rigby for her ongoing dedication to debating as MIC. The last three years have been particularly challenging, given the constraints associated with the pandemic. Thank you to our debating staff – Head Coach Alexander De Araujo (SHS-2018) for ensuring quality coaches were available for each team; Katherine Cheng for coaching first grade; Elly Harcourt for managing the PDC competition for Years 11 and 12; Jeanette Cook for her work with Years 9 & 10 PDC and the FED Competition; Jo Curry for the Year 7 & 8 PDC teams; and Rian Wiramihardja for managing the Eastside competition. Our senior B team won the FED Competition – Nicholas Francis, Mohammed Medlej, Shaun Parasher and Sarvesh Parthiban. The Year 9 team won the Eastside competition – Liam Nottage, Nathan Hu, Andrew Pye, James McLoughlin and Arjuna Thiagalingam. I would like to thank the members of the Debating Supporters Group for their assistance, despite so few face to face events being held in recent years. Our thanks go to Hazel Stephen who managed the Legal Debating program.

"Fencing has become a complex but very popular 3-weapon program under the guidance of MIC Dat Huynh. I thank Dat for his efforts and Mimi Wong and Lynnea Stewart for assisting with supervision during the week and support during Saturday competitions. Thank you to the coaching team - Ted Elliott (Epée) and John Tian for his Saturday assistance; Garry Huang (SHS-2016) and Leo Kostic (Sabre); Kevin Chen (SHS-2021) and Lachlan Blaire (Foil). They have been dedicated and inspiring. The Fencing Committee is very active in support of our students during fencing fixtures. Thank you to Cindy Ho, Binh Johnsun, Rosaline Perry, Jaimie Nyam, Helena He and Chamila Jayawardhana for their catering and fund raising efforts in support of the team.

"The cross country program continues to thrive under the long term stewardship of Rebecca Dam. Thank you, Rebecca. John Prorellis has also assisted in the program for a long time. Thanks, John. We appreciate the efforts of our Old Boy coaches – Eric Holmstrom (SHS-2019), Thomas Schanzer (SHS-2019) and Rhys Shariff (SHS-2021). Thank you for your work. To all the dedicated parents who gave of their time to help at the High hosted cross country event – thank you so much.

"Our Rifle Shooting program was managed very professionally again this year by Daniel Comben (SHS-2003). Thank you to our full bore coaches - Jeremy Chan (SHS0-2014), Desmond Chiang (SHS-2015), Jason Feng (SHS-2017), Darren Huang (SHS-2017), James Jiang (SHS-2017), Alex Tan (SHS-2019), Terry Fong (SHS-2013), Nathan Wong (SHS-2017) and evergreen Sam Kremer (SHS-1992). Our thanks go also to our small bore coaches: Wentao Ruan (SHS-2017), Dinan Pingamage (SHS-2019), Evan Han (SHS-2015), Jeffrey Lee (SHS-2021), Ricky Li (SHS-2018), Justin Lum (SHS-2021), Tom Nguyen (SHS-2021), Dennis Chiang, Andrew Lui and Kieryn Mascarenhas (SHS-2016). Thank you to our parent supporters who looked after everyone so well – Syed Ahmed, Kurt and Kay Dean, Quoc Cuong Luu, Juno, Keiko and Yasuno Narushima, Olga Sukhovskaya, Douglas Tan, Min Xu, Jocelyn Yem, Andrew Young and Sophia Zhang.

"Our rifle shooting program made history this year. They won the Fiona Reynolds All Schools match and the Prorak Trophy. High won the second grade GPS Competition. The first grade team won the Rawson Cup, The NRA Shield, The Buchanan Shield and were thus first grade GPS Champions - the first time since 2001. Seven of our team were selected for the Combined GPS team. Since the competition began in 1902, High has never had a clean sweep before, highlighting the depth, expertise and tenacity of this group of High boys. Congratulations to everyone involved.

"Legendary football coach Vince Lombardi won 5 NFL premierships and 9 out of 10 play-off games in a long career with a 73% success rate. He said of sports said ’the price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand’. Team sport teaches you to apply the best of yourself to the cause greater than yourself – team success. It is up to you to play your part, do your job to the best of your ability and strive to accomplish the team goals. Your orientation should be towards contribution to the combined effort, not on whether you are personally having a good or bad day. It is the strong collective spirit that overcomes obstacles. We see that spirit in our rifle shooting team. We witness that each time Queensland wins the State of Origin as underdogs. Together we are much greater than the simple sum of our parts, but it takes a positive team psychology to achieve this extra dimension of performance. It all starts with the base preparation that we must do off season or pre-season to get into the physical shape required to build stronger skills in our chosen sport during the season of competition. I want to congratulate those selected in GPS teams and exhort them to enjoy their season by applying the best of themselves to their competitive sport."
Dr K A Jaggar
Principal