Physical Education

Sports Shorts 

We've nearly crossed the finish line of term 3 BPS!

Congratulations to us all for weathering a huge term 3 across BPS! We’ve all done a great job with the ever-changing weather conditions and brimming full learning term we've all had! High five to every BPS staff, student and family member for your incredible efforts!!!! 

I wanted to start this overview of our term in BPS PE and Sport with a "cool" story about one of our young athletes who plays a very different sport and invited my wife and I to watch one of his games on the weekend. I love celebrating the physical activities and sports our students play and love and I hope you enjoy reading this article below and all the news and celebrations of our term 3 2024 in BPS Sports and Physical Education.

Our "Mighty Melbourne Duck" soars high!!

An ice rink, skating proficiency, a puck, a helmet, a mouthguard, hockey stick and lots of padding. This is what our "Mighty Melbourne Duck", Lachy, in grade 4 at BPS, does on his weekend. The sport? Yep, you guessed it, Ice Hockey!!! It's an incredibly fast moving sport of hockey skills, combined with incredible maneuvers and skills on the ice!!!

Lachy has been playing with his under 11 team, the "Melbourne Ducks" for just over two years in the Ice Hockey Victoria league. Lachy didn't start playing the sport until his family left the Ice Hockey loving nation of Canada some years ago! However, his Mum and Dad say that Lachie did learn to skate at the age of 5!

Being invited to watch Lachy play in his team's grand final on the weekend was such a great experience! Watching the sport in person for the first time was amazing! I was riveted by the speed and skills these young athletes have mastered to zip up and down the ice, all while chasing a moving puck which is pinging off walls and players! 

Having been on the receiving end of defeat last season, Lachy's team knew how tough it was to win a Championship. They also knew what it would take to win and win they did. After winning the first game of a possible three finals, Lachy's team played their hearts out and won the Championship against the Jets with an incredible 17-5 score at the final siren! Normally playing in defence, Lachy scored a ripper goal in the final to help his team' score-line grow and it was the first time Mum, Leigh-Ann, had seen Lachie score!!! He normally plays his games at 6.45am so she doesn't always get to see him play but "That was the best part of the game for me, seeing him score!" And Dad, Jason, a well seasoned Ice Hockey player himself, was all smiles yesterday after being part of the coaching team and seeing Lachie and the team win. Lachy says his favourite thing about playing ice hockey is, "It's dad’s favourite sport and I wants to grow up to be a good player like dad!"

To conclude a big weekend of ice hockey, Lachy was awarded the Coaches Award on Sunday night at the team presentations. The Coaches Award recognised the player on the "Melbourne Ducks" tea that demonstrated continual positivity and leadership throughout the season! Congratulations Lachy! What a terrific effort!

Thanks Lachy and your family for inviting us to see your game and watch a new sport and your awesome skills and team-work on display! "Quack, Quack! Go the Melbourne Ducks!"

BPS House Aths! What a fun day!

The celebration point of our 10 week Track and Field unit in Physical Education cumulates every year with our BPS House Athletic Sports in term 3. This foundational track and filed unit runs every year to help our students practise, improve, refine and prepare for their annual BPS House Athletics Sports. We spend time on track and field events so every one of our students are prepared and understand the techniques associated with each different event. Our students are given the opportunity every year to participate in five field events and up to four track events in their house sports, except grade 3's who need to wait until grade 4 to sign up for hurdles. Every athlete is given points for their placing and participation then after the event, their result are sorted and posted on Showbie and in the gym for them to see and record. This is the "icing on the cake" for our students for all their hard work and efforts in PE and at their House Sports. It shows them how much they've improved from previous years and helps them set goals for the future.

Congratulations to our Grade 3 - 6 athletes, staff and volunteers for the terrific day we had at our 2024 BPS House Athletics at the Bill Sewart Athletics Track on Wednesday 31st July. I always love this day because I see our students giving everything a go and getting the best out of themselves and each other. 

A massive thank you to Jo Seton and Adam Sloane for their huge help leading up to our House Athletics day with tailoring our digital recording system to make recording our athlete's PB's and house points on the day so much better.

Congratulation to every athlete who participated and displayed excellent effort, perseverance and encouragement to each other throughout our sports day!

Thank you to our BPS Staff and volunteers for making this day run smoothly. 

Thank you to our BPS Staff for their efforts on our day; Mrs Fountain, Mrs Sage, Mrs Ferguson, Mrs Uzunbay, Mr Liebrich, Ms Chau, Ms Lawlor, Mrs Battista, Mrs Arthur, Miss Tainsh, Mr Pitinga, Miss Yi, Mrs Dixon, Mrs Shacklock, Miss Wood, Ms Fusillo, Mr C, Jon Stagg, Kerry Hall, Susan Hale and Yuki Zhang.

A huge shout out and thank you to our volunteers; Jen Fuller, Hans Wong, Kate Heng, Jo Seton, Lisa Pickford, Kerri Pickford, Anna Prowse Ian Pickford, Fiona Rezannah, Jason Rezannah, Casey Andrews, Maurice Leung, Natalie Rankin, Gillian Byrne, Amy Bartlett, Cam Ross, Belinda Dealy, Melissa Herring, Nicole Battye, Anthony DeCastella, Shona Rudland, Drew Rudland, Gayatri Sharma, Julie Hesse and Lucy Frick. 

Congratulations to Sturt House (green) who were the winning house for our BPS Grade 3- 6 House Athletics for 2024!! It was super close with the points but green came out of top!! Well done!!!

1st – Sturt

2nd – Cook

3rd – Tasman

4th - Dampier

BPS OLYMPICS DAY - Celebrating our community!

What an incredible day we shared as a school on our BPS Olympics Day on Friday 9th August. With the Paris Olympics already in full swing, our BPS community celebrated the diversity of who we are by coming to school dressed in our country colours! It was a sea of fabulous colours and my heart felt so filled up having us all together celebrating the many backgrounds we come from!

Our day started with 20 of our BPS students from F-6 running the torch around our new BPS athletics track. Our House Captains shared their BPS Olympic oath with us then we had the privilege of having Australian Paralympian, Annie Colman, and BPS Dad and athletic coach of Annie, Anthony De Castella, officially open our BPS athletics track! Annie and Anthony shared with us some beautiful insights about perseverance in life and sport, working hard to achieve your dreams and celebrating the spirit of community at BPS! Our students then completed so fantastic Kahoot quizzes about flags and countries of the world, made their country flag and either an Eiffel Tower or Olympic mascot! Our "Waving Flag" Country ceremony at the end of the day was incredible! Every student and staff member of every represented at BPS was given the opportunity to walk a lap of honour around the gym waving their country flag as we acknowledge each other. It was a beautiful moment to be a part of with so many BPS families coming to watch this celebration!

Thanks to everyone who made this day so special!

Congrats Annie, your family and Coach Anthony!

Congratulations to Annie Colman, our 1500m Paralympian, your family and Anthony De Castella, for the incredible 4th place run in the Paris Paralympic 1500m T2 race! Annie ran in Paris on Friday 6th September in the 1500m and ran an incredible race to stay with the top bunch right across the finish line. Annie finished an incredible 4th and smashed her 4:40 minute PB by 9 seconds!!!! Superb effort Annie and congrats to you, your family and Anthony for your hard work and achievements.

What have we been up to in Physical Education and Sport, term 3 BPS?

In BPS Physical Education and Sport we have had a huge term. In PE sessions our F-5 students have been doing a gymnastics unit, learning about safe landings, strong support shapes, rotations, balances and also learning to juggle!

Our Grade 3 – 6’s have completed their 10 week Athletics unit this term as well as an Olympic themed sporting and teamwork unit based around various sports at the Paris Olympic Games. Our Grade 6 classes have completed their Olympic; Your Voice: Your Choice: Let’s Play unit, where all three of our grade 6 classes were given the opportunity to vote in and play various Olympics sports. Our sports played across our grade 6 classes included Olympic Handball, Beach Volleyball, Fencing, Gymnastics, Target shooting, hockey and badminton. Of course some of these sports were modified!!! We fenced with pool noodles and used an actual light weight beach volleyball to play a fun class game!

In BPS Sport we’ve had our BPS District Athletics team represent us at the Blackburn District Athletics Championships on Friday 30th August. We had a team of 68 amazing athletes run, jump, throw and relay run on the day for us. We were one of 8 schools competing on the day and BPS placed 3rd overall, which is a super effort! Our team were amazing in their encouragement and respect for each other and the other schools. We're always so proud of the way our representative teams conduct themselves. A big thank you to Mrs Fountain, Mr Liebrich, Miss Tainsh, Yuki and Mrs Uzunbay for their support on the day with our team. Thank you to the staff training team who helped me train our athletes leading up to the event: Mr Liebrich, Mr Merlino, Mrs Bennett and Mrs Battista.

BPS District Volunteer Shout Out! A massive thank you to Belinda Dealy, Jen Fuller, Kris Munro, Kawal Lamba, Laura McGeoch and Sarah Chidgey for your support at district athletics. Thank you all for your time and support on the day! We appreciate you!

Whitehorse Division Athletic Championships 2024

Congrats to our 21 BPS athletes who have been selected to represent BPS at the Whitehorse Division Athletic Championships on Monday 14th October (week 2, term 4). We wish you all the very best for your events! What a wonderful achievement!

High fives to the following athletes who will be representing BPS next term: Charlie, Jakob, Max, Charlie, Chelsea, Arielle, Max, Xiuqi, Connor, Ruby, Elliott, Alisha, Matthias, Charlotte, Zoe, Macy, Cleo, Amelia, Daisy, Mengsi and Neve.

BPS Tchoukball Tournaments in full swing!

Is it about chickens running with a ball?!!!! As our readers, you may be wondering what on earth is Tchoukball! Tchoukball was invented in Switzerland in the 1960s and was developed in the early 1970s by Swiss biologist Hermann Brandt. Brandt developed the sport as he was concerned by the number of injuries in other sports at the time and began researching ways to create a 'safer' sport for people of all ages to play. The name "tchouk" originally came from the sound of the ball rebounding off the metal rebound nets. When the ball hit the net and rebounded off it, it made a “tchouk” sound. 

The aim of the game is for the attacking team to throw the ball off the net in such a way that the defensive team cannot catch it and it hits the ground! This scores one point. The game is really different as no team has a designated end to score so it help students with decision making about which end to score at based on where the defence is and where the open space is! If you want any more information, ask your children, they love the game!!!!

Thanks to our Grade 6 Tchoukball organisers for running our tournaments. Over the last two terms we’ve managed to run two very exciting Tchoukball tournaments at BPS. Thanks to Grade 6 leaders Audrey, Shreya, Sophia, Emily, Reyansh, Hetu, Leroy, Rayan and Jake for running these great tournaments for interested players on a Friday lunchtime. 

Congrats to all our grade 3, 4 and 6 players who took part in our tournaments. It was a joy to umpire your games and see your improvements in teamwork and skills in this terrific game.

Before School Running Club!

Thank you to Team Battye, Team Turner and Team Armstrong for continuing our Before School Running Club every Wednesday at our BPS athletics track. Thank you for persevering through the cold winter months and ever-changing weather to show up and support our runners every week! We appreciate you!!

Grade 5/ 6 Summer Sport 

Although it feels anything but summery outside, our Grade 5 and 6 students have been training all term for their chosen summer sports including volleystars, sofcrosse, basketball and tennis hot shots. Over the last two weeks our teams and staff have played in the district round robins and done a superb effort! Thanks to all our students and staff for their hard work and developments over the last term and at our competitions.

Thank you to the following BPS volunteers on the day for our sports; Kate Heng, Lena Wong and Maria Sutanto for volunteering your time at Hooptime to help our teams.

Thanks to Mrs Arthur, Ms Lawlor, Mrs Sage, Mrs Fountain and Miss Tainsh for being amazing coaches and support for our students!

Grade 3-5 Swimming Program 2024

I had the opportunity last week to watch our students in action at the Nunawading pool and it was awesome to watch our super fish in the water practising so many important water safety and swimming skills. Thanks so much to all our Grade 3 – 5 staff and ES team for supervising our students and getting them to and from the pool safely. These skills our students learn are such valuable life skills for them to feel safe and have fun in the water throughout their lives.

Term 4 BPS Sporting Dates

October

Whitehorse Division Athletics – Monday 14th October – Doncaster Athletics Track

Regional Athletics – Thursday 24th October

BPS Kaboom House Sports F-2 – Wednesday 30th October - 9am - 10.40am BPS oval or gym

November

District Sofcrosse Grade 6 Summer Sport Tournament - Friday 22nd November