ST MARGARET’S and Berwick Grammar Schools celebrated their 10-year anniversary in HPV and cycling on Friday night.
Over 250 present and former members of the St Margaret’s and Berwick Grammar HPV and cycling squad gathered together for a night of celebrating and reliving the fabulous decade.
The goal of the night was to showcase how far the group had come while still remembering the early days and to achieve this end, the first part of the night was given over to reviewing 2014 and the Maryborough successes in particular. At Maryborough, seven teams were entered in the very large fields and five of these were either runner-up or winners in their categories.
The junior secondary team ‘Taurus’ gave the squad their first victory in the year-seven and eight category. The secondary female team ‘Ceto’ continued on their remarkable journey winning Maryborough for the third successive year while completing fifteen-straight competition victories. The secondary male team ‘PerZeus’ finished second along with ‘Zeus’ sixth, while the other secondary female team ‘Scorpius’ also finished second. The junior (primary) team ‘Shooting Star’ finished second while ‘Cosmic Rocket’ finished fifth to complete the most remarkable squad results in the history of the school and certainly the best of any school at Maryboough.
The original ‘Something Blonde’ vehicle had been lovingly restored and nearly all original members were present to recreate an original photo. Continuing on with this theme the first ever juniors team that also involved the first male riders from 2007 was re-created with the same vehicle as they raced in. This was particularly exciting as three of the riders had left St Margaret’s some time ago and moved to different locations.
Jemila Anderson flew in from Perth to be part of the event and the current world junior track cycling champion Courtney Field also attended and caught up with those who helped play a part in her cycling career.
There were several other high points including an outstanding video highlighting the 10 years of participation of over 150 riders and over 250 adults. St Margaret’s School also announced their HPV-Cycling team of the decade with Georgina Beech, Kristina Behrsin, Saffron Button, Rachel Hore, Briony Russell, Brittany Steels, Alex and Sophie Weston selected. A number of these girls have gone on to compete in very high level cycling competition. The final significant memory was the unveiling of an honour board listing all captains since the first official recognition of this position in 2008.
