Hornby Hoop Champions
In 2008, there was not a single basketball team in Hornby High School. Eleven years later and there were seven to eight basketball teams formed each year, all filled with students eager to show their skills on the court.
In 2019, the Hornby High Senior basketball teams qualified for the New Zealand Secondary Schools Nationals, the first time ever in the school’s history.
This is a local story of belief and hard work, battling against the odds and finding a way to be a true Champion.
Read on below for the full story.
Three quarters into the game and Hornby High School is in the lead! The Senior Boys basketball team is head to head with old rivals, a far cry from how they started, 11 years ago.
The year was 2019 and the team was playing - school honour on the line - at the Southern Premiership Tournament. Here they placed fourth, qualifying them for the New Zealand Secondary Schools Nationals: the almighty Schick Championships.
Let’s stop here and rewind to the beginning.
The year was 2008 and Hornby High School back then didn’t even have a single basketball team. Enter James Harris, a newly started Hornby Community Youth Worker with CDN Trust. Growing up in Nelson, he was a lover of sports, especially basketball. He was eager to work with the students of Hornby High and help out. Immediately after starting, James put his hand up and said, “is there a basketball team I can be involved with?”
The school’s sports coordinator heard his call and helped James put the word out. In the end, only three boys and eight girls in the whole school signed up.
“We were [very] humble beginnings.”
It was James’ start to sports coaching so he asked another teacher to help him out. Matua Mike assisted with the girls team and the following season, they pulled a boys team together which James coached.
Building basketball teams from the ground up definitely didn’t come without its challenges. The school gym at the time had bent rims that were more oval than round. The coaches were asking the students to wear something other than their school uniforms for practice, to bring proper gym clothes and a water bottle. They were also motivating the students to consistently show up to practice. They wanted to work towards excellence but they had to get over these hurdles first.
"It was about setting a standard of expecting something better.”
In 2009, they entered their first Senior team into a Division 2 competition. Hornby High School won some games but there wasn’t much structure around their gameplay. Slowly and steadily, the teams stepped up their game, learning to play better each year and becoming more consistent, to a level where in 2014, they could enter their first basketball tournament.
“We had a great time. We only won one game and kind of got hammered by [the] other teams but it was a great experience for those guys.”
As a sports team from Hornby High, they were admittedly tight on budget and stayed in the most basic accommodation they could afford, almost an hour outside of Dunedin where the tournament was taking place but that didn’t matter to James and the team.
"The tournament environment really gave them something to aspire to and [the students] came back with such a buzz of, we've got to go back and do better.”
From that point on, their goal was to make it to Nationals.
"That was a very dreamy goal," James says with a laugh. "We had a long way to go.”
To do that, they knew they needed to join the Tuesday night Thompson Trophy competition. After that, they would have to qualify in the top five of the Southern Premiership Tournament to go to Nationals, held in Palmerston North every year.
The Hornby High basketball teams continued to win more games and every year, the Senior Boys team were stepping up: from being next to last in their ranking to stepping up a place every tournament game. Along with this growth, the basketball teams were growing too. From zero teams and not a lot of students wanting to play to having seven to eight basketball teams in the whole school, full of players just a few years later.
James and the other coaches began to set expectations of the students' performance in school, particularly with showing up to classes and attending.
“They were students first, [sports players] second.”
"You can't necessarily control every bit of [the students'] performance but you can do your best, and your best means to show up and be there," James says with conviction.
Youth workers like James were building that connection for students that getting to play the sport can also equal good performance in school. With James' work, it was more than just coaching these young people to play sports but helping them improve as a whole.
“For me, it was never about the sport but sport as (..) a great tool to teach what you can achieve when you work together as a team."
Working together and being a team can also be a challenge with cultural differences between the players but James had set up procedures in place to nip things in the bud when things got too heated.
Over time, the students were showing growth and stepping up when needed. James shares an anecdote of one Senior boy who took the initiative to congratulate the opposing team, holding the door open for them on their way out after a competition. The team’s standards for excellence have evolved to set a positive attitude in their sportsmanship.
"We’re Hornby. We’re going to leave it all out there on the court. We'll play it hard and then we're going to shake hands [after].”
They learnt that after the first game of the season, the team would pull together and solidify which proved itself during the 2019 Southern Premierships in Greymouth. In that season, in that game, James noted how the team was faster and stronger than the year before, resulting in Hornby High besting Greymouth High School and placing fourth in the whole competition.
"It was pretty exciting and the guys were [really] starting to believe in themselves."
With the team starting to realise their goal of making it to Nationals, they had to rally the necessary funds to actually make it happen. And rally they did. Multiple fundraiser sausage sizzles were held and Dress Smart graciously funded a portion of the fees they needed. The Hornby High School Senior Basketball teams were officially playing in the New Zealand Secondary Schools Nationals.
Hornby High School played their games fiercely during their first ever go at Nationals but in the end, they were bested by the other teams. The results didn’t matter because the team achieved their goal and for some of the younger students, they got to experience playing basketball at a national level before the Covid-19 pandemic struck and cancelled a lot of their games the following season.
Looking back, James reminisces on his time as coach now that he has stepped back from the role, allowing the Wharenui Gators Basketball Club who have supported the team over the years to fully step in as Hornby High’s new coaches. He hopes to see Hornby Basketball continue to flourish, where the students can develop not just their sports skills but also be a place where they can learn to build on their performance at school too.
“For some of the students, [basketball] became the thing that kept them in school for a while longer than they would have otherwise.”
“[Seeing the students’ growth has] probably been one of the most rewarding parts of my job.”
We at Te Whare Awhero (Hope House) love to support Champions. The Hornby High School basketball teams are champions in our corner of the city and it’s fair to say that we are some of their biggest fans.
As part of our Hornby Champion initiative, we have come on board to sponsor the Hornby High School Senior Boys and Girls basketball teams with training tops and support towards the costs associated with attending future tournaments. Check out some of the players looking smart with their brand new gear!