Kicking the monkey to touch

At 2pm on March 19, a dozen boys in maroon and yellow sports uniforms huddle on a sideline at Albert Park, completely absorbed in their coach Matiu Paraone’s words. Experience has prepared the Te Awamutu…

Central Kids Hazelmere Kindergarten’s 40 pint-sized poultry farmers are eagerly awaiting their first servings of scrambled, fried and boiled eggs – and enjoying some fluffy cuddles in the meantime. The students have incubated and hatched…

Asarina Johnson says she went to a Te Awamutu Rowing Club open day in 2022, got in a boat and hasn’t wanted to come back to dry land since. “Rowing is my happy place, I…

It has been 551 days since Waikato Hospital doctors discovered a golf-ball-sized tumour ballooning inside Fionnlagh Adams’ brain. At risk of death from the pressure building in her skull, the four-year-old was rushed to Starship…

Steph Bell Jenkins talks to a remarkable Waipā woman who would love to create a global revolution. Like her, they were children.  Unlike her, they were living in slums, starving. Pieta Bouma is as outraged…

Te Awamutu College’s junior girls’ football team made a discovery – of sorts – in Hamilton last Sunday. They’re at their best when attacking. At Flagstaff’s Discovery Park in Hamilton – the home of Northern…

St Peter’s Cambridge has won the 2023 Battle of the Waipa Schools, beating Te Awamutu College and Cambridge High School to lift the trophy. The private school hosted the annual inter-school event, which involved hundreds…

Hundreds of year 9 and 10 students from St Peter’s Cambridge, Te Awamutu College and Cambridge High School are revving up for this year’s Battle of the Waipā Schools on May 18. St Peter’s sports…

In the early hours of January 23, Black Sticks goalkeeper Leon Hayward walked out onto the bright blue turf at Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswar, India, with New Zealand’s hopes resting on his shoulders. The Black…

As a teenager, Daphiney Owen used to cruise around the rural roads of Rangiaowhia in old cars with her friends, completely unaware of the bloody massacre that took place there. Now, many years on, the…