Mr Richard Dobrenov | Deputy Principal and Head of Senior School
Last Wednesday, our Year 9 students were fortunate to hear a presentation from Olympic 400m sprinter Steven Solomon, who spoke to them about finding and exploring your passion. Steven used the metaphor of a 400m race to present his message and broke each section down into segments of 100m.
During the first 100m of finding and exploring your passion, Steven encouraged the students to try different subjects, sports, and activities without specialising in any one area. This allows you to find what you enjoy and what you are good at. As a teen, Steven dreamt of becoming a Wallaby and tried a number of different sports like tennis, cricket, soccer and swimming before settling on athletics. The second 100m is where you find your position within your chosen field. It took Steven three and a half years to find out that 400m was his ideal distance for him, after pursuing the 100m and 200m events. The third 100m segment is where you learn from failures and develop perseverance, and the final segment is about taking those lessons from your shortcomings and training purposefully to be your best.
Steven also stressed the important difference between exercise and training. Exercise is what you do for fun, whilst training is planned, segmented, and has key goals in mind. He also stressed the need to persevere in anything we do when things start to become difficult. One of his anaerobic training sessions involves sprinting on a spin bike for 2 minutes and then resting for a minute….20 times! Steve claims that after the 4th set, his brain is saying things like, “that’s enough, you trained really hard yesterday, give yourself a break today,” and this is what tests his perseverance. The ability to push through when things are tough and persevere is crucial to success in every venture both inside and outside the classroom.
Steven’s presentation was well received and hopefully inspires our students to push through when things become challenging and to set goals and train purposefully to get there.
Over the last week, we’ve had the privilege and honour of hosting some special assemblies to recognise and introduce our leaders and captains to our College community. Last Friday, at our Leadership Induction ceremony, our 2023 College Captains, Vice Captains, Prefects, Clan and Boarding Captains were officially sworn in, in front of their family, friends and peers. This was a very special ceremony with a sense of occasion that set the tone for the year ahead. Here’s a link to the video in case you missed seeing it on our Facebook and Instagram pages:
Congratulations to our following College leaders:
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