Chrizia Cayanan was named dux of Ashburton College for 2018 on Wednesday night. Photo supplied.Eighteen-year-old Chrizia was named Ashburton College dux on Wednesday night at the Year 13 prizegiving and her brother Carl, 17, was named deputy head boy on Thursday at the Year 12 prizegiving.

The family came to Mid Canterbury from the Philippines in 2012 and Chrizia said mum Christina and dad Christopher, a motor mechanic at Honda Country, were very proud of what they’d achieved.

Chrizia was top student in physics, stats and accounting and scored highly in her other subjects to become dux ahead of the proxime accessit Artem Kravchenko. She was also awarded several scholarships.

Chrizia is heading to the University of Canterbury next year and has plans to be a secondary school maths teacher. She will be studying towards a Bachelor of Science, majoring in maths.

She said she had wanted to be a maths teacher since she was a young child and loved working with numbers. She also excelled in German and was one of two Ashcoll students to attend a scholarship language school in Germany last summer holidays.

Chrizia said she had worked hard over the years on her school work but also found time to be a member of the Ashburton Youth Council and hold down part-time jobs at a supermarket and berry farm.

The siblings have encouraged each other too, though they have different talents. “I am the brains and he is the people person,” she says with a laugh.

Teachers have also provided plenty of support and she names German teacher Ken Pow and accounting teacher Claire Bedward as her favourites.

She and Pow are competitive chess players.

Chrizia said her focus now was on exams, with calculus and accounting first up on November 13.

At the Year 12 prizegiving, the school’s 2019 leaders were named – head students are Mollie Gibson and William Wallis, with Harriet Stock and Carl Cayanan as deputies.

Principal Ross Preece said 10 girls and 13 boys put their hand up for consideration and the final four were chosen after an intense selection process.

“There were some quality candidates who didn’t make the short list and some quality candidates who were not chosen.”

He said the school had been well served by this year’s student executive, who were on hand as the head students’ names were revealed.

Naming deputies, which happened for the first time this year, had been successful and the four had shared the roles well, he said.

© The Ashburton Guardian - 3 November 2018

For Ted Yee, cross-country skiing training this winter involved roller blades or roller skis on the footpaths of Ashburton. Phtot supplied.Cross-country skier Ted Yee is used to having some of the best training possible at his doorstep, literally. But winter 2018 had been different.

Ted, who hails from New England in America (where snow typically covers the ground for the bulk of winter), has spent this winter living in Ashburton where the nearest competition cross-country skiing venue is hours away in Wanaka.

So he’s had to improvise, using roller blades or roller skis and hitting the footpaths of Ashburton to keep up the kind of momentum which had seen him make the Massachusetts under-16 team back home.

It has done the trick.  In September Ted headed to Snow Farm in Wanaka for the national secondary schools’ cross-country skiing championships where he finished third in the classic event, fourth in the skating event and third in the team event where he joined up with a couple of skiers from Dunedin.

It was a good result considering there had been few opportunities to actually train on the snow in New Zealand, compared to back home. Most of his training has been done on roller blades or roller skis, with the track around the Ashburton Business Park one of his favourite training grounds locally because of its smooth and flat surface.

Ted, a 15-year-old year 11 student at Ashburton College, came to New Zealand in July with his family, mum Mary, dad Ed and sister Peggy. Mary Yee, a GP, landed a position as a physician at the Moore Street Medical Centre for a year so the family packed up their lives for an adventure on the other side of the world.

Three months in, they are loving it, although it has felt a little odd to look out the window and see flowers in bloom in the middle of winter. For them, winter generally means piles of snow everywhere and endless snow shovelling.

The family hails from a town of about 7000 people, called Dalton. The town’s claim to fame is that for more than 200 years it has been the only producer of US currency paper.

In the summer it is muggy and humid, but in the winter it is cold, with snow generally covering the ground from Christmas through to the end of February.

Snow and snow sports are a big part of their lives. Ed Yee used to be a coach for the American junior Olympic biathlon team, a job which saw him help set up a programme aimed at seeking out some of the country’s brightest young future stars. That, Ted said, was probably how he got the cross-country skiing bug.

He skied for his school ski team for the past three years and was also on the Lenox Memorial Middle and High School athletics team.

In the summer, Ted runs. He is pretty good too, the fastest on his team and sixth in the league back home, which is about the equivalent of sixth in Canterbury here.

With the ski season finished, the New Zealand secondary school athletics championships is the next big competition on his mind.

There he is eyeing up the longer distances – the 3000m and the 1500m.

“I’m better at running, but skiing is a lot more fun because it’s faster and it’s fun to just fly over the snow,” Ted said. “And it’s not as harsh as running on your legs, so you don’t get the injuries like tendonitis and things like that.”

When it comes to the future, Ted doesn’t know where his future lies. In America, competition is tough when it comes to high performance sport, and spots at the winter and summer Olympics are hard to come by. So he is just taking things as they came.

For now, that means enjoying the experience of a year abroad and looking forward to telling his mates back home about his experience attending nationals during his year in New Zealand.

Ed Yee said while the nearest cross-country ski area that was regularly open in the South Island is in Wanaka, that didn’t mean it wasn’t possible to achieve great things.

“We have people who have made the Olympic team that live in New York, who practise in Central Park,” Ed Yee said.

By  Erin Tasker © The Ashburton Guardian - 3 November 2018

Matt Clough battles the elements in the Xterra. Photo supplied.Ashburton multisporter Matthew Clough has finished ninth in his age group at the 2018 Xterra World Championships in Maui, Hawaii.

The 18-year-old Ashburton College student lined up at the start of the race earlier this week in what has been described as some of the muddiest, dirtiest conditions in the event’s 23-year history.

Given what competitors faced, Clough said he was pleased with his result of ninth overall in the 15-19-year-old section.

“Just getting to the finish line was a massive achievement in itself,” he said.

He crossed the finish line in a time of 4.14.32 hours, after completing the swim leg in 24.01 minutes, the bike leg in 2.40.38 hours and the run leg in 1.09.53 hours.

“I had a decent swim, out of the water fourth, a tough bike fighting the mud the whole way, having to stop many times to clear the mud from my frame so that my wheels would actually spin,” Clough said.

The run leg was slippery, but Clough was pleased with how it went overall.

Clough described the race as super tough and said it was a long day at the office, but he was happy knowing he’d left it all out there.

The Xterra World Championships are like an off-road triathlon, with the road bike switched out for a mountain bike and the road run exchanged for a cross-country run.

Earlier this year Clough travelled to Denmark to compete at the ITU Multisport World Championships.

In Denmark Clough, 17 at the time, won silver in the under-19 aquathlon and silver in the 18-19 year age group in the cross triathlon.

By Erin Tasker © The Ashburton Guardian - 2 November 2018