The Tavistock College Year 8 and 9 Athletics squad competed in the Plymouth and West Devon Championships at Brickfields yesterday.

This is a prestigious event with schools from across the area competing including very strong squads from Ivybridge, Plymouth College and Mount House.

It is fair to say that both myself (Mr Hulbert) and Miss Squires are immensely proud of the whole squad not just in the way they performed, but also the exemplary conduct they showed respecting other athletes and what was most impressive was the students ability to support each other in every event.

The majority of the squad produced personal bests and there were some outstanding performances which deserve special mention.

Abbi 08F – qualified for both the 100m and 200m final, winning her heat and finished 6th in these finals.
Jodie Stacey – qualified for the 200m final – finishing 5th.
Tom Norgate – finished 5th in 1500m.

To qualify to represent the Plymouth and West Devon squad at the upcoming Devon champs students needed to finish in the top 3 in each event and Tavistock produced the most qualifiers in a long time, with seven qualifiers and two having to wait.

Ethan Lamerton and Francesca Herdman, 2nd in hurdles heats have to wait to find out if their times are quick enough to qualify.

Becky Banks finished 2nd in the shot put final, producing a powerful display even though she is a year younger than most competitors.

George Hillson finished 1st in 800m heat – an excellent performance with George accelerating away from the rest of the field with 200m to go.

Jodie Stacey finished 2nd in 800m heat. A fantastic performance against a high quality field.

Ben Milligan finished 2nd in triple jump. An explosive performance with a jump of over 10 metres.

Jordan 09T, finished 3rd in the long jump and high jump with an impressive performance particularly in the high jump where he jumped a personal best of 1.45 metres against a high quality field.

Joe 09DA, finished 1st in 400m final. This was an outstanding display, as Joe who has limited experience in running this distance - not only won his final, but his heat as well.

The whole squad are a credit to the college and deserve congratulations.

Tavistock College Athletics squad: Jasmine Ewings, Ryan Brimacombe, Ben Milligan, Billy Rowe, George Hillson, Ben Roberts, Tom Norgate, Joe 09DA, Ethan Lamerton, Jordan 09T, Jacob Kirkpatrick, Cyrus Larcombe Moore, Stephen Kirby, Caleb Prouse, Tom 08G, Abbi 08F, Beth Wilson, Jodie Stacey, Francesca Herdman, Minerva 08T, Jasmine Edwards, Lauren Crick, Becky Banks, Annie 08F, Steph Hutchins and Neev Elliott.

Congratulations to six of our Year 8 and 9 students who received the award for the most innovative design at this year’s EDT Go4SET project which took place on Friday, 10th May.

Sponsored by Babcock Marine, the team worked closely with teacher, Mr Alex Jackson and Babcock mentors Mr Alex Hook and Miss Jen Walker to ‘move’ Tavistock College to an island of their choice and ‘transform’ it so that it was still a fully functioning school. To do this, the team had to research the College’s needs, adapt existing solutions to island life and ultimately ensure that the College still functioned and worked in the ways it needed to.

The students researched, planned, designed, discussed, wrote, read and modelled, and finally came up with a finished proposal: a school placed on the island Gili Trawangan in Indonesia, powered by a wind/wave generator and heated by a geothermal system that doubled as a desalination plant for fresh water, while also supplying power to the school.

The Judges were really impressed with their finished report and even want to use it as a model of good practice for next year!

The 2013 Ten Tors and Jubilee Challenge events were held on Dartmoor last weekend in what can only be described as difficult and challenging conditions! The four Jubilee Challenge students completed route 1 in four and a half hours, a tremendous effort in the conditions with two students being pushed along the route, in special all terrain wheel chair buggies, for the last leg, wrapped in foil against the cold and wet.

Catch their interview on Spotlight at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-22493333

The 45 team featured in the news clip, all completed the challenge, even managing to cross the finish line at Okehampton camp wearing pink tutus! A fantastic effort.

The 35 mile Team finished just before 45 team, a brilliant effort, minus one team member who had to come off the moor due to injury on Saturday evening.

The 55 mile Team despite a supreme effort in extreme conditions, were forced to retire on Sunday late afternoon after a severe time delay waiting to cross dangerously swollen rivers, heroically taking time to rescue a member from another team who was stuck up to her shoulders in a swollen river and the fallout of two of their team members due to injury.

Congratulations and well done to everyone who took part.

Thank you to all the Team managers who have given their time over the last five months training the teams and to the numerous parents, friends and colleagues who offered help and support, without you this event wouldn’t happen.

Gerry Woodcock, former Head of Sixth Form at Tavistock College, came into college recently with a collection of photographs of the college dating from the 1920s, for the online digital archive. These will be available for everyone to see shortly when the archive is up and running. We are all really grateful to Gerry for his help in this – he was also able to name many of people shown in some of our old photos. After half term there will be a drop in day when members of the public will be invited in to see if they can name some more of the past students and staff shown in the photos.

Gerry Woodcock is well known for his series on the history of Tavistock and his collection of photographs features the development of the college buildings, various drama productions, sports teams and whole school photographs.