Sumner Marching Team

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28372, 3 September 1957, Page 12

Sumner Marching Team

Many persons who have but a passing interest in girls’ marching competitions must have found pleasure in the choice of the team of girls from the School for the Deaf, Sumner, to visit Sydney in November to compete in Australian championship contests. Some may not be aware that the choice was made entirely on merit; the New Zealand Marching Association, which has been sending teams to Australia for several years to help foster the sport there, insists that the teams sent should be of provincial standard. The Sumner team has gained that standing in only four years—a notable achievement for any team—but its members have had to overcome the peculiar handicap of not being able to hear signals of command. Extraordinary feats of memory enable these young girls to compete on even terms with others in performing

the intricate manoeuvres demanded by a championship test. Last summer, in its first season of open competition, the Sumner team was extremely successful. The admiration the girls have won has been expressed in the wide and generous response to the appeal for funds for their visit; for the New Zealand association also insists that the teams going to Australia should find their own finance. In Christchurch, some of the individual efforts to help the fund have been made by people who could not have found it easy; one elderly woman, with no direct association with the team, raised about £4OO by a prolonged house-to-house canvass. With such support, the success of the appeal seems assured, and when the team leaves in November for a tour of very considerable value to its members, it will go with the warm good wishes of everyone.