Pastoral Care and Old Boys' News

• Year 9 Rites of Passage Camp
• House Cup 2022
• Boxercise
• Edmund Rice Education Beyond Borders
• Year 5 Kokoda Walkway Excursion
• Manly Jazz Festival

Year 9 Rites of Passage Camp

We begin Term 4 with our Year 9 Camps at our “Workul Koo” Retreat House at Terrigal. This important activity builds upon the Curriculum of Story of our student Pastoral Care Journey through the school and is based on our Year 9 Pastoral themes: Respectful Men of Honour and the Parable of the Good Samaritan – “Go and Do Likewise” Lk 10:25-37.

Students will participate in a Paddle Board / Kayak lesson on Terrigal Lagoon, Crackneck Coastal Bushwalk and First Nations themed cultural awareness session, Avoca Beach Surfing lesson and Take 3 for the Sea Environmental awareness actions.

The camps take place in homerooms and students are reminded to return their permission forms this week as we wish them well. 9H1 commence their camp first day back Monday 10 October, Day 1 Term 4.

House Cup 2022

The House Cup was inaugurated in 2010 as an opportunity to acknowledge participation in co and extra-curricular activities across the College.

Our College Vice Captains Ben Cullen and Ronan Crispe were supported by Mrs Fromager in the Front Office to determine and  award points for involvement in events and activities from debating, music, drama, robotics, sports, the Red Dirt Expedition and Edmund Rice Beyond Borders initiatives.

The Final Tally for 2022 was:

Therefore the winner of our House Cup for 2022 with a massive Tally of 5257 points and lead by our newly crowned ISA Shot Put Gold Medallist for 2022: Ollie Aylmer.

Congratulations to Treacy House and to Rice House in a close run for second place with 4840 points.

Boxercise

Out of respect for the Queen’s passing and the public holiday this Thursday, last week we held our final boxercise session for the term and farewelled our Year 12 Boxercise Leaders. These students have led Mr Russo’s Boxercise program on Thursday and Friday mornings between 7.30 am and 8.00 am throughout their time at the College to the great benefit of a huge number of Junior students from Year 5 to Year 7 transitioning into the College. But in reality to the health, fitness and wellbeing benefits of many in our wider College community, including online during COVID-19 lockdowns over recent years.

Congratulations and thank you to Alex Birchall, Alex Pelle, Rufus Ashford and Joshua Sheather in particular, and to Mr Russo for inspiring this great initiative for our community.

Edmund Rice Education Beyond Borders

Thank you to the following students from Year 9 RE, Year 10 and Year 8 who continued our commitment as a lead EREBB school when they connected with St Dominic's CBC Welkom, South Africa last Friday evening our time. St Dominic's is a multi-racial, inclusive, co-educational Edmund Rice school in the bush veldt of the Orange Free State of South Africa. Welkom is a small mining town 10 hours drive from the sea, with our closest parallel perhaps being Broken Hill!

Kobe Mendel, Jordan Papastamatis, Lachlan Staber, Rob Oner, Charlie Woolf, Jason Jarrett, (Year 9) Cooper Anderson and Tom McElvogue (Year 10), Brayzen Sargent (Year 8) stayed back last Friday afternoon to meet on Zoom with the St Dominic's students who arrived early to school South Africa time. They forged positive connections and a sharing of our stories and values as schools and students in the Edmund Rice tradition.

The group will follow up our Student Leadership Team Zoom connection on 5 October with another Zoom lesson and link up at 4.00 pm on Wednesday 2 October.

Year 5 Kokoda Walkway Excursion Tuesday 8th November 2022

On Tuesday 8th November our Year 5 students will join veteran servicemen and women and our Chatswood RSL Sub branch sponsors to walk the Kokoda Track Walkway and Rose Garden Memorial at Brays Bay Reserve Concord Hospital.

They will hold a short Remembrance Service at the memorial adjacent to the Ralph Honner lecture theatre which we hope will feature some of our Year 7-10 trumpeters playing the Last Post and Reveille.

All Year 5 students will be asked to research the story of a veteran chosen from the Rose Garden Memorial and to place a poppy in the Garden in honour of that serviceman / servicewoman.

Chatswood RSL have requested that several of our students read their research at the Remembrance Day Service in Chatswood Garden of Remembrance and as such we have asked the following students to research and prepare:

5 Gold: Rory Rapa for researching Lt Col Ralph Honner whose son John spoke at our school on his father’s story.

5 Red: Maxwell Sunjaya who researched Pte Jacob de Sisto and Old Boy of SPX KIA December 18, 1944 on Bougainville and buried in Bomana War Cemetery PNG.

5 Blue: Charlie Wilcox for researching Sgt (later Capt) Bede Tongs MM who fought over the Kokoda Track as an 18 year old and visited our school in 2014 before our first Kokoda Track Expedition.

Hopefully their research and the experience of this excursion will inspire some of our students and their mums, aunties, dads, uncles or significant others to hike the Kokoda Track with us on our 2024 St Pius X College Kokoda Expedition and Immersion. 

Lest we forget.

Manly Jazz Festival

We look forward to seeing St Pius X College Senior Jazz Band performing under the entertaining leadership of Mr Geoff Power this Saturday at the annual Manly Jazz Festival; St Matthew’s Church venue on The Corso, 11.45 am - 12.30 pm.

It’s a great way to celebrate the weekend: 2.5 km, 7.00 am ocean swim followed by coffee and entertainment that can't be priced. See you there!

Wishing all our families a fulfilling, restful and rejuvenative Spring break. 

Fide et Labore

Mr Sean Brannan - Assistant Principal, Mission and Identity