Students revel in spirit of sports and health

By Mathias Huckert 21 August 2016, 12:00AM

While the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro are still running at full blast, Samoa is to this day waiting for its first medal at the games. 

But sport is not always about achievements. This is what Samoa’s youth at Robert Louis Stevenson School in Lotopa was able to prove once again at the newest edition of their annual Sport Day held at Marist St. Joseph Stadium.

Before the actual sports festival had taken place, an introduction performance was celebrated at the stadium. The school’s 392 students had, divided into groups of the different colours blue, red, golden and green, rehearsed a special group chant along with a dance in which both, elements of traditional Samoan culture as well as modern popular music was used to convince the other groups of the performing group’s superiority.

The groups’ individual performances were then evaluated by three judges according to different criteria, as the school’s principal Fiaapia Devoe was able to tell Samoa Observer.

“They judge the performances according to each group’s uniform, flag, chants and the entrance. The children have practiced these activities as part of their weekly sport’s activities for the last five weeks. By now, they should be quite good at it, also because we noticed that they take it really serious.”

There was no doubt about taking their performances serious, as each and every one of the four groups could proof in front of the assembled parents and teachers, who had trained with the students for their big day.

“The groups were chosen by their teachers, because they have to be split up so that there’s a certain balance in terms of strength between the teams,” Devoe explained.

After the groups had introduced themselves with their performances, the time was right for the actual sports event at Marist St. Joseph Stadium. In seven different activities, the four groups competed against each other in order to find out which was the fastest, most flexible and most accurate of the four colours.

Besides of this competitiveness, the Sport Day’s fun part definitely was in focus of the event. The activities of the day therefore included special relay races with coconuts, a sack race or the throwing of limes into buckets to proof each group member’s accuracy.

Despite of the fun factor’s dominance at Marist St. Joseph Stadium, there still had to be a winner at the Sport Day’s introduction performances. This time, the judges had chosen the green team’s performance to be the one of the day.

But in the end, all students at Robert Louis Stevenson Primary School were the winners, as they had given their best during their performances and the activities which had been prepared by them for such a long time.

By Mathias Huckert 21 August 2016, 12:00AM
Samoa Observer

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