A year on from the inception of the Blair Vining Foundation at Central Southland College, the school’s First XV rugby team has shown some incredible leadership on the field.

The team recently won the Under 18 Southland competition, beating Southland Boys’ High School by 18-15 in the final.

CSC Sports co-ordinator Andrea Beggs said a lot of the team success this year was a credit to the values that the late Blair Vining instilled in the team last year.

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"There's just a really good culture, on and off the field, with our boys," she said. 

She said the main value the boys had been taught was to "be a good man on and off the field”.

Mr Vining created the foundation to provide support and opportunities to CSC students, which he felt were often only seen at larger city schools.

He wanted to bust the misperception that students had to leave Central Southland to achieve their sporting goals, and this year the fruits of that dream were being realised. 

Three CSC rugby players have recently been selected to play for the Rugby Southland U18 and U16 boys’ teams. Te Hura Wilson will play in the U18 team and Mackenzie Hunter and Caleb Van Brecht will play for the U16 team.

The sporting success for CSC does not stop there though. The U15 rugby team was also runner up in the U15 co-ed schools’ tournament.

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The team beat Rangiora High School – "which has a roll of around 1800" – in the U15 South Island championships, and made it to the final, Mrs Beggs said. 

The Senior A Netball team then won the Central Netball Competition. 

It then came in fourth behind three single-sex girls’ schools in the recent Otago/Southland Netball Tournament. 

Netball players Riley Ballantyne and Erin Forde were identified as talented players after the tournament last month and will now be invited into the Southern Steel programme in 2021.

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For a school with a roll of around 500, these results show it is small but mighty and can punch far above its weight.

"We've also have had quite a bit of success at a National Trap Shooting up in Christchurch over the weekend," Mrs Beggs said.

CSC student Courtney Laughton came in third in the New Zealand ladies’ skeet and Courtney and Hannah West represented Southland to be placed second overall. 

Eddie Smalley was also selected to represent Southland.

The Central Southland College mixed hockey team won a bronze medal at the South Island Secondary Schools Mixed Tournament. PHOTO: Central Southland College

The mixed hockey team also won the bronze medal at the South Island Secondary Schools Mixed Tournament after beating Kavanagh College 5-0. 

"This is the first time for a few years that we've had a mixed hockey team, but we've had a new coach this year, and she decided that the strength would be in a mixed team and she was right."

Again, she credits the good values instilled in the kids, on and off the field, in the success of the sports teams this year.

"A good culture gets results, and that's been proven this year," she said.