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Craig Ashton, Orewa College Year 7 and 8 sports coordinator, had a busy lockdown, creating a series of online videos of interviews with sporting stars and coaches including boxer Joseph Parker, rugby player Anton Lienert Brown and netballer Alex Mcleod-Smith.
He says the idea was to fill what was then ‘a void of sport’ with stories, advice and experiences from the athletes for students and their families to view.
It helped that Craig knew most of the people he interviewed – either from his own school days, or through being in the sports world as a coach.
Among the 16 interview subjects were several ex-Orewa College students, including league’s Shaun Johnson and Olympic paddler Caitlin Ryan.
Jed Melvin, Tom Jordan and Lewis Gjaltema, also ex-students, talk about their journey in aspiring to forge a career in rugby and Nic Fuller, Louis King and Aoife King share their views about leadership and captaincy while at school and what they learned.
“It was great fun being a sports journalist for a while, doing the research for the interviews, putting it together and then the fun part of actually sitting down and talking sport,” Craig says. “The athletes shared similar themes of having a passion for their sport, work ethic to reach the top and finding a balance between being an athlete and having their identity outside of sport. They all dreamed big and worked very hard to achieve their goals.”
To see the interviews, visit www.orewacollege.nz/activities/sports/sports-interviews-2020
