Message from Principal Paul Yeung - Grand Slam in Joint Athletic Meet 2011

Dear Josephians,

On 19 and 20 December, 2011, St. Joseph’s Anglo-Chinese School was the Grand Slam winner of the Join Athletic Meet of the Hong Kong Catholic Diocesan School (Secondary Section). There were 26 Catholic diocesan secondary schools competing for the Overall Championship. Our school won the Grand Slam because we were the winner of not only the Overall Championship, but also the Champion of all grades A, B and C. That was a clear cut victory. Our students have proved that they can achieve the highest. Ad Astra!
 

The process for such success started 14 years ago. Due to the renovation of the Hong Kong Stadium, the Joint Athletic Meet was stopped for many years. In the spring of 1998, the Joint Athletic Meet re-started at Siu Sai Wan Stadium, a venue that accommodates 13,000 audiences and was suitable for that event. Unfortunately, after many years of idling, our Athletic Team members were rather weak and nearly got no prize. The chairman of the team, Fung Kam Cheung, told me that they wish to get prizes as the other schools did. I then encouraged them to try.
 

The Athletic Team members really tried their best. The team won the Overall Championship of Division Three that year and was promoted to Division Two. Then the team won the First Runner-up in Division Two and was also promoted to Division One in the next year. Our school was one of the rare cases of being promoted in two consecutive years.

After being promoted to Division One, it was hard for the students to get prizes because we were competing with the strongest 16 schools in Hong Kong. Then the graduates of Athletic Team started to return to school to teach and encourage our team members. They used their own time and taught our students voluntarily. When I find that, I arranged transport fee for them at the beginning. When such contribution persisted, we offered coach fee for their services. Then we found that Josephians could really win prizes in individual events. In order to achieve high, the old boys suggested inviting coaches of the Hong Kong Team so that potential students could receive compatible training for the keen competition in Division One.

In 2010, the Athletic Team achieved Overall Second Runner-up in the Division One of the Inter-school Athletics Championships. We were actually in the leading position among those diocesan secondary schools in the Division One, but we were still the First Runner-up in the Joint Athletic Meet of the Hong Kong Catholic Diocesan

School (Secondary Section). In our review, we found that the Athletic Team of Cheung Sha Wan Catholic Secondary School was actually weaker than ours and was behind us in the former event, but they used the whole school resource to beat our team in the latter event. Therefore, we knew that the encouragement of the fellow students in the audience stall was one of the decisive factors to success.

This year, the Student Association contributed their effort to arouse our students to cheer for our athletes. Although our athletes were tired and under great pressure, they would squeeze all their might for their goals when they hear the cheering of their schoolmates. When everyone was performing their best, we win at all levels together with Overall Championship (Grand Slam!)

We know that our school was the strongest in 4 x 100 m relay in the 1970’s. However, there were not many athletes in the field events and the school was not in Division One. Now the fellow students really achieve high in both track and field events. The dream of St. Joseph’s has come true. Let us celebrate!

Yours sincerely,