Boarding News

Dear Boarding Parents,

National Boarding Week runs from Sunday 14 – Sunday 21 May and during this time we will join with schools across Australia to celebrate boarding and all it offers to young people. It is also an opportunity to recognise the significance of being a boarding school and reflect on what this means to us at Marist College Ashgrove.

Marist College Ashgrove is proud that it has been a home away from home for boarding students since it first opened its doors in 1940 and it remains a very strong part of the fabric of the school.

Boarding is a way of life that offers unique opportunities like making new friends from all parts of Australia and the world, as well as developing confidence, character, and independence. A strong sense of camaraderie, team spirit, and brotherhood is synonymous with boarding at Marist College Ashgrove. The opportunity to live, work and play with your mates makes boarding a special experience for our boys.

The 2023 theme for National Boarding Week is ‘The Patchwork of Boarding’. We have a big week of activities planned to capture and showcase our boarding community and our Marist boarding experience. With the help of the boys, we created a video to highlight the many different places our boys come from. We’ve entered this video in a competition being run by the Australian Boarding Schools Association on their Facebook page and we encourage all families to get behind our entry by giving it a like.

The boys will also be hosting a special breakfast on Thursday morning which all staff involved in our boarding program have been invited. At this breakfast, the boarders will collectively thank the staff who do so much to assist them on their way through school.

And then over the coming weekend, we are hosting several other Brisbane boarding schools at an outdoor movie night on McMahon Oval using the school’s new electronic scoreboard, as well as having a combined Mass with the Stuartholme boarders in our College Chapel.

As we celebrate National Boarding Week, we are proud of our 83-year history of educating generations of young men from rural, regional and remote areas across the country and the world.

Boarding Recreation - Mr Blair Whitlock

It was great to see so many boys heading out on leave for the Mother’s Day weekend which made for some quiet dorms! Friday was a relaxed evening at school with an hour of games in the gym before retiring to the dorms to watch the footy. Saturday saw Round 3of AIC Sport take place with the first home game of the season against Iona College. Home games are always a special atmosphere and it’s great to see so many of the boys supporting each other in their matches throughout the day. After a tight first half, the 1st XV took control of their match against Iona and ran out comfortable winners with boarders Bailey Caplick, Atticus Armstrong, Harry Thomson, Harry Condon and Cody O’May leading the charge. On Saturday evening twenty of our younger boys headed over to Clayfield College for a disco night in their boarding house. It’s always good to catch up with the girls from Clayfield as well as St Margarets and Somerville who were also in attendance.

Sunday morning kicked off with a 9:00am Mass before hitting the road for Mooloolaba. After cancelling a beach trip earlier in the term for dodgy weather we decided to push on despite the varied forecast. Despite the boys moaning about the cold water, we were lucky as the rain stayed away long enough for us to get a good few hours in the waves. There were some decent-sized breakers rolling in, which the boys always enjoy testing their bodysurfing skills against. As we hit the Bruce Highway the heavens finally opened with some torrential rain making it a slow trip back to Ashgrove.