Commonwealth Games

The Commonwealth Games (formerly the British Empire Games (1930 - 1950), British Empire and Commonwealth Games (1954 - 1966), and British Commonwealth Games (1970 -1974) is an international, multi-sport event involving athletes from the Commonwealth of Nations. The event was first held in 1930 and has taken place every four years since.
(Except 1942 - 1946 which were cancelled due to World War II.)
The games are described as the third largest multi - sporting event in the world, after the Olympic Games and the Asian Games.

This year the games commenced on 24th July.

Kapanui School also celebrates this event quadrennially kicking off with their own opening ceremony.
It was held in the school hall, starting at quarter to ten on Thursday 31st July. 

Each whanau class represented a country from the Commonwealth of Nations, some featured were Botswana, Cyprus, Bermuda Triangle and England.

However, before commencing the ceremony we had half n' hour to prepare to prepare all our props such as flags and chants. At around 9:30am the whanau classes started to parade into the hall utilizing all their props. It was so stunning as there was an explosion of colours from each of the different whanaus; Te Waka, Te Whenua, Te Awa, Te Moana and Nga Manu.

We were very fortunate to have Rugby Sevens superstar Ashley Drake at our opening ceremony to give us a brief experience of the real Commonwealth games in Glasgow. 

Each whanau class was granted 30 seconds to present some facts about their country. (Some had the national anthem playing faintly in the background.)
In between some presentations, there were a range of acts including cheerleading, gymnastics, dancing and karate. The ceremony was filled with lots of interesting information.
The opening ceremony closed off with Cullen Tran (myself) and Iona Peters singing Your Song by Elton John. We all then went back to our classes for morning tea. 

After our morning tea which consisted of 20 minutes, the fun was about to begin! Due to the bad weather, all the games were held inside. For each game you went to, the teacher would score you out of ten for a) Excellence in the activity and b) Team spirit and encouragement, as an extra the teacher could decide to give you bonus points. Each whanau class had to go around 6 classes each for different games which lasted 15 minutes each. So, this in total took 1 hour and a half. There were a variety of different games such as Tiddly Winks, in which you had to use a big counter to cast small counters into a plastic counter inside a chalk-drawn circle. There was also a game where you used a fly swat as a golf club to dribble a ping pong ball around some cones. It was really fun and I can't say that no body didn't enjoy themselves.
The medal presentations were to be held the next day at assembly.

The medal presentations:

On Friday 1st August, at 2pm we had our closing ceremony. I could clearly see all the students in tension busting for the results to be announced. Everyone tried their best but their could only be three with medallions. Here are the results as followed:

1st place: Nigeria (Gold)
2nd place: Cook Islands (Silver)
3rd place: Botswana (Bronze)

Thank you very much to everyone who helped make this day a success and for taking your time to read my article.