An east Auckland school with a history of success in hip-hop dancing has overcome 29 others to triumph at a national competition.
Bucklands Beach Intermediate School’s (BBI) talented young hip-hoppers earned gold medals at this year’s Zespri AIMS Games in Tauranga.
The team from Somerville Intermediate School won silver while Saint Kentigern College was 10th and Farm Cove Intermediate 17th.
BBI won with a final score of 9.13 to Somerville Intermediate’s 9.04.
The AIMS Games are Australasia’s largest junior sporting event and intended to celebrate diversity, provide an opportunity for Kiwi kids to compete in sporting competitions, meet others from outside their normal peer group, and learn and build on their social interaction skills.
BBI’s nine-member hip-hop team is managed by teacher Carrie Barnett, who principal Diane Parkinson describes as its “motivational force”.
“We’ve been entering hip-hop at AIMS since 2012,” Barnett says.
“Every year we audition and put a group together in about March.
“They train once a week from 7am to 8.30am and we have a few weekend trainings as well if need be, which we had to do this year.”
The winning team was choreographed by former BBI students Jasmine Jones and Mischa Inglis, who say it was nice to win gold after placing third last year.
“It means the world. We are so proud of the girls.”
Barnett says the team went into the Games aiming to win a medal.
“BBI has a long-standing tradition with hip-hop at AIMS and we’ve only ever not medaled once, so there’s a lot of pressure and expectation on them.
“I put a team together in 2012 when my daughter was a student at BBI. She’s now a professional dancer living in Los Angeles.
“She coached the team for a number of years, and we’ve had a number of ex-BBI students take the team over the years.
“It was nice to win gold again. We haven’t won a gold for a number of years, so it was lovely.”
Pupils at BBI who want to be part of its hip-hop team for the AIMS Games audition to be selected.
The team performs once in the preliminary round, in front of an audience and the judges, without knowing what their score is, before doing another routine in the final round.
A rightfully proud Barnett says the team’s members were elated to hear they’d won.
“They were absolutely over the moon. They were ecstatic – very, very happy.
“There’s a video online of them winning and they were all crying, all balling their eyes out. They were so happy.”
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