A moment of success

Last year in Term Two, one day singing was interrupted because Mike from the New Zealand All Sports Academy addressed the assembly and asked the students if some of us wanted to join his academy to go overseas to compete in sports events like rugby and soccer.

The trials began the next week. There were a lot of us who trialled the first day. Then, on the second day I trialled out for soccer with a lot of others. It was hard but we all did a fantastic job.

When Mike was about to make the announcement of who had made it into the team it was a nervous time for all of us. Finally when he announced who made it we were proud that all of us who trialled that day made it in. I was extremely proud of myself.

Then came lots of training, lots of hard work and fundraising opportunities. When Mike told us how we were going to fundraise, quite a few of the members of the team dropped out because they didn't like fundraising. They didn't attend the trainings and  did not come to the fundraising so Mike did not let them back in the team.

The fundraising we did was not only in Auckland it was in Wellington, Hamilton, Napier and other places in New Zealand. The best place for fundraising was Napier because lots of people gave donations and we raised a lot of money that afternoon and the other best place was in the capital city Wellington.

Training went on full swing. Every afternoon after school we practiced hard. The day came when we met at the Panmure library on the 10th of April to go overseas. It was a time of happiness for all of us kids and our families because we achieved what we had been training and fundraising for.

We got on the plane, we were all excited to go overseas because it was a great experience for us all . The view from the plane was beautiful. It felt like we all were looking at little toy houses. Our first stop was in South Korea. We stayed there for a night. It was one of the best hotels I have ever been to in my life. It looked like a hotel designed by Donald Trump. The next morning we got ready to leave the hotel and head off to the airport. At the airport was very confusing. The flight information was mostly written in the Korean language until this Korean man told us where to go because he could understand and speak English. We got on our plane. One hour later we headed off to England to start our tour in the Uk for Soccer and Rugby.

On the plane I realised that this was a moment of success for my mates and I. All our hard work paid off.  We worked for achieving success and did very well playing against English and Scottish teams and won some of our games. What an experience! I will remember this for a long time to come.