Three PNBHS teams competed at the Central North Island Regional Debating Competition in Whanganui last weekend. Each team took part in five rounds of debating in which the school saw great success. The two development teams competed to varying strengths, with the team consisting of Blake Storrier, Ollie Gillespie and John Hopcroft doing exceptionally well, winning four out of their five debates to finish closely in third place overall. The teams debated a wide variety of moots, the most controversial of which being “This house would ban all contact sports” in which the Senior A affirmed and won. The PNBHS Senior A had a good start to their year, also winning four out of their five debates. As three teams in the competition finished having won four debates the selection for the finals came down to total individual speaker points from across the entire competition. The top three teams, including two from PNBHS, had only a total difference of 2.3 points between them. This led to the PNBHS Senior A being selected to go up against Whanganui High School Gold for the finals. The Senior A gave it their all but could not quite defeat Whanganui on their own turf, narrowly losing the final making them runners up for the competition. This was still a satisfactory result for the team, as a PNBHS Senior A has not made the finals since 2013.

What did PNBHS the most credit however was the individual speaker awards in which the school “cleaned up” so to speak. Ollie Gillespie was selected as a reserve for the regional team, and awarded most promising speaker of the competition and John Cole once again was awarded a highly commended. However the big winner was Andrew Karatea, winning not only a place on the regional team, but the award for best style, and the award for best speaker of the competition, neither of which a PNBHS student has won in many years. An excellent start to what will hopefully be a prosperous year for debating at Boys High.

Congratulations to Zac Soper who is leaving PNBHS to begin a painting apprenticeship with DML.  Zac is the first Gateway student this year to leave and begin his four year journey to becoming a fully qualified trades person.  We wish him all the best for the future.

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At the Head Prefect's Assembly this morning school Prefect Ajay Bansal spoke about the Peer Tutoring programme.  Young men who wish to take advantage of this service need to complete the online form at this link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=13vCqYI036w5jXE-CMCIAEUKUkLDvoI-xKZb3dSnLCu4

Click here to read the March 2019 PNBHS newsletter.

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1st XI Cricket Prem A T20 Competition – 16/03/2019

VS Old Boys CC

Having lost the toss and been inserted, the PNBHS opening batsmen made a great start, scoring 81 in the first 13 overs. This allowed successive batsmen to attack the bowling and keep the run-rate positive. Of course, aggressive batting inevitably led to wickets falling and the 1^st XI felt they fell a few runs short, finishing on 130 for 9. Ruben Love scored 28, Levi Woolston 39 and Jack Wenham 52.

The first few overs in defence proved to be frustrating, with the opening bowlers gifting extras to the opposition. Fortunately, the first-change pairing of Woolston and Wakeling managed to dry up the runs, resulting in wickets for Woolston who continued his good form from the Rathkeale game. Wenham introduced himself and, with Old Boys chasing the game, wickets continued to fall, keeping the game evenly poised. Needing 5 off the last over, the opposition must have seen themselves as favourites but an outstanding over from Woolston yielded 2 runs and a wicket to see them finish 2 runs behind on 128 for 8. Jack Wenham took 3 for 23 and Levi Woolston 3 for 18.

A win to the 1^st XI by 2 runs.