My Top 10 for 2016

My departure from Independent Newspapers on a, nominally, voluntary severance deal, while not really a surprise, did come rather suddenly, which meant my end-of-year routine was thrown a bit.

In the bustle and uncertainty – it seemed for a while that they had come to their senses and recognised that dropping a publication as popular with readers as the Saturday Star SchoolSports supplement was madness – I let the last edition slip by without my customary review of the year and the listing of my top 10 school sporting achievements

The resurrection of SchoolSports never happened. So, in the interests of tying off 2016, here’s my two cents worth on the top events in Joburg I attended during the year, in no particular order:

     1. Let’s start with the usual suspects, and the first of those has to be St Benedict’s College, winners for the 23^rd consecutive year of the boys competition at the SA Schools rowing championships.

     Their prowess is very much based on their strength in depth, which means they work harder than anyone else, and while they carry on doing that then, frankly, you can’t see anyone toppling them any time soon.

     

     2.  In similar vein, Northcliff High School took the Joburg co-ed schools A league athletics title for the 20^th year in a row. They have an obsessive culture of winning that no-one has been able to emulate.

3. St Mary’s School, Waverley are probably, pound for pound, Joburg’s top sporting school (they are at the top of the pile in just about every other school activity as well). Their achievements are summed up in two photographs they send me to publish each year: the girls who receive provincial colours, and those who make national teams.

They are both half-page affairs and in themselves they make the highlights list. In the process St Mary’s won the hockey Pullen Trophy; were narrow runners-up in their own national hockey festival; won the girls school athletics, tennis and squash leagues and were runners-up in the swimming and at the SA Schools rowing champs.

4. St Stithians Girls College could well challenge St Mary’s prowess in the years to come. In 2016 they emerged as real contenders in water polo. Under the coaching of SA men’s polo captain, Pierre Le Roux, they were runners-up at the St Peter’s Festival in March, and then went on to win the Clarendon and the Saints Invitational Tournaments in the second half of the year.

5. Four of my highlight spots go to outstanding individuals. The first is Patrick Duvenhage of King Edward VII School, whose high school athletics career ended this year without him ever being beaten in the discus or shotput. In the process, he broke every record in the books of those two events, and was ranked number one in the country through the age groups.

He has played a big part in KES’ prowess in boys schools athletics over the past five years and they’re going to miss him.

6. Jeppe High School for Boys are similarly going to miss Wandile Simelane. He has been one of the stars in their successful 1^st rugby team over the last two years, and made the SA Schools rugby team for the second year in a row after the Craven Week this year. He then went on to play for the Golden Lions under-19 team at the end of the season.

He was, quite simply, the most exciting back on display in schoolboy rugby this year and was the most talked-about wherever he played, including on the biggest stage – the Coca-Cola Craven Week.

7. The third individual shiner hasn’t quite completed the outstanding feat that caught my eye, but those in the know confidently expect him to do so at the Khaya Majola Cricket Week next week. He is Ruan “Patches” De Swardt of Pretoria’s Affies.

He was in the SA Schools Colts cricket team at the end of 2015, and then made the SA Schools team at the Craven Week this year. If he is named in the SA Schools team at the cricket week next weekend. He will be only the 12^th to make both sides, and the first since Adrian Penzhorn of Maritzburg College did so in 2002.

8. The fourth of those individual over-achievers is Wiaan Mulder. The St Stithians cricketer also has another chapter still to write – he will captain the Gauteng team at the Khaya Majola Week – but he already has a List A century and a “fifer” to his name and they are whispering “the next Jacques Kallis” about him.

He was player of the tournament at last year’s Majola Week, and at the Coca-Cola Schools T20 Challenge, and led the SA under-19 team to Bangladesh earlier in the year.

You have to believe those who are predicting that he will be in the national side sooner rather than later.

9. In the process, Mulder steered St Stithians College to the greatest cricketing era in the school’s history. When they lost to Affies in a T20 game in October it was their first defeat in three years – a 71-game unbeaten run – and they have won every honour that a school team can.

The number of their players making Gauteng provincial teams in the various age groups, alone, is worthy of my highlights reel.

10. The final spot in this random listing has to go the King Edward 1^st eight crew. I never saw them win the Schools Boat Race in Port Alfred last week, but I was there when they shocked friend and, especially, foe, by winning the premier race at the Gauteng Rowing Championships at Roodeplaat a few weeks ago. It was a return to prominence by a school that has taken a back seat in recent years and that they put one over their better-resourced private school rivals is, for my two cents, worthy of the year’s highlights package.

Speak to you from the cricket in Bloemfontein next week ….