Has anyone ever heard of the Olympics? Well I have, but that’s besides the point. Every year at the garden school there are events that are held almost every year like: Athletics day. If you’re wondering what athletics day is, it’s basically a knock off version of the Olympics (not really but it’s just not the same as the Olympics) except there aren’t countries competing, it’s house colours. If you don’t know what house colours are it’s basically colours that students get sorted in at the start of the year. Sadly you cannot change colours, you just stick to the colour you got from year 1 to year 8 (or whatever year you joined at the school). Every year the students compete in cross country, athletics and so on, and at the end of the day they announce the house winner!

When I arrived at school today I knew it was going to be trouble. I saw everyone in their house colours or in their fitness gear. Luckily I didn’t sign up for any sprinting mainly because I’m slow and I suck at running, so I signed up for every fielding event. When I entered the classroom the whole classroom was already on the mat, so I quickly found a spot to sit. After we did the roll the teachers told us to get our bags. Once we did that the teachers led us to the bus. Before leaving they did a classroom check to see if everyone was there (it was very chaotic). When we went on the bus, it was a really weird experience because there was a black tube in the center of the bus (I’m not sure how to explain it). I then sat down and waited till we got to the park (more specific Massey park). After the teachers introduced the reason why we were here all dressed up as our house colours (although I already knew the reason was athletics day).

My first event of the day was high jump. We had to go to the high jump at 9:45 on the dot. I was really confused on where it was so I tried asking some people but they all said they didn’t have a high jump. Then I tried exiting the fence/barrier but fortunately other people were heading to high jump so I followed them. I was so relieved that I made it because I did not want to be late for my first ever event. When we made it to high jump they introduced us to how to do the high jump. I was somehow the first in line, so I had to go first. They told me to go to one of the 2 dots, I chose the one closest to me. They then told me to go run diagonal and try to jump over the bar. I failed tremendously, apparently I was supposed to hop on one leg when I got to the bar and then I was supposed to lift up somehow. What’s shocking me is that I can’t jump on two feet.

After high jump I had a long jump (which was at 10:20). Long jump was really close to the high jump so I had no trouble finding it. Long jump was pretty simple. We just had to run up and jump, but we have a line if we passed the line and jumped then we would be disqualified. To be honest I think that I did really bad, the first time was alright but the second time I got sand in my shoes which made the rest of the day uncomfortable. After the long jump I had discus (which I don’t remember what time). We basically had a really bad time finding it, we first went to the little kids discus then we finally went to the senior discus. I’m just gonna say I sucked at discus, like the first throw I didn’t even make it out of the net. The teacher told me I could take another turn since I didn’t understand the concept on how to throw a discus. Then on my “second ” throw I actually made it out, but just barely.

The last event I had was shot put, but it was 1-2 hours from discus, so I just watched the races. My friends also did really well in their races! One of them even came 1st in one of the sprints. It took a while but the shot put finally came. Sadly I was also horrible at shot put but I put a lot of effort and sadly effort didn’t help. I do think I could have done some sprinting but maybe next year!