Last Wednesday, we hosted our Harcourts Cooper & Co Intermediate Schools Festival (ISF) at Marist North Harbour RFC. The weather played its part and we saw an awesome day of rugby with 46 teams participating across our Rip and Tackle grades.  

A highlight of the day was the return of the Girls Rugby Tackle Grade. Carmel College, Belmont Intermediate and Glenfield Intermediate all entered teams and played some outstanding rugby throughout the festival.

Carmel College stood out to our referees and engagement team, winning the Harcourts Cooper & Co Team Spirit Award. This was Carmel’s first ever tackle rugby team in any grade. Carmel College Sports Co-ordinator Claire Magness said "despite nerves, especially as most were new to tackle rugby, they showed courage and embraced this new experience." Our Girls activators had been in at Carmel for weekly sessions leading up to the festival to teach safe tackling technique and help build their confidence. “Knowing the girls were getting quality instruction on how to tackle and how to take a tackle was a relief, the Harbour activators coming into Carmel to take them were fantastic,” Magness said. They showed awesome heart, impressive skills and played the game in great spirit. The award puts them in the draw to win Harcourts’ famous “Coffee&Cone” truck at their school.

The enthusiasm for rugby at Carmel was evident to see with Claire commenting, “we want to build on our numbers to have a team at Carmel for these girls to play in each year.”

We are looking forward to doing it all again with our second ISF on the 26^th of July.