Dribbling profits pupils of Mairehau

Press, 17 April 1978, Page 1

Dribbling profits pupils of Mairehau

Mairehau High School pupils yesterday broke their own 24-hour world basketbail dribbling relay record—and went near their $3OOO target for a sports and cultural trip to Australia next month.

Sixty pupils from the school’s basketball teams dribbled a ball 380.4 km round Queen Elizabeth IT Park, bettering by 44.4 km the previous world record set by the school about four years ago in a similar venture.

The participants had been sponsored and it was hoped to raise about $?500 to $3OOO towards the Australian trip, said the school’s physical education teacher (Mr K. E. Williams).

For the “dribblethon,” which started at 4 p.m. on Saturday, the pupils were divided into six groups of 10. Each group worked for an hour at a time (or four hours altogether), each member dribbling the ball round the 400 m track on their own before passing it on.

The fastest lap, 60.1 sec, was by a seventh-form pupil, PhiUp Welsh. Mr Williams said the pupils had stood up to the pace very well. One or two had pulled muscles or strained knees, but all had finished. The new mark would be sent to the “Guinness Book of Records,” he said. The school's girls basketball team—the New Zealand champion—the boys’ basketball team, and the music group will leave on May 22 and return on June 2. there will be 70 in the travelling party, and the Australian host school will be Killamey Heights, Sydney.