Class Act ten years on: Columba College

Where are they now?

As an Otago athletics representative, Sophie McCormick (nee Napper) was a silver medallist in the South Island Secondary Schools Athletics senior girls’ 100m and 200m sprints and part of the team that won gold in the 4×100m relay. She was also in the Otago under-19 netball team and the NZ Talent
ID netball programme. She planned to become a primary school teacher.
2021: McCormick works for BLENNZ (Blind and Low Vision Education Network New Zealand) as a resource teacher (vision). She helps pupils around Otago who are blind or have low vision to access the curriculum and build life skills. Before this, she was a teacher
at Balmacewen Intermediate. In 2018, the Dunedin woman returned to athletics after playing representative netball and winning the 2013 NPC National Netball Championship. In 2019 and 2020, she was the bronze medallist in the senior women’s 400m at the New
Zealand Track and Field Championships. She was also part of the senior women’s 4×100m and 4×400m relay teams that won silver both years.

 

 

 

2011: First equal in the Chinese Bridge National Speech Competition, Kate Waterman had achieved distinction in Royal Academy of Dance exams and high honours passes in her NZAMD jazz exams. She hoped to become a primary school teacher or a paediatric nurse.
2021: Waterman recently completed a certificate in health and wellbeing, with the aim of becoming a health care assistant and delivering recreational programmes  in rest-homes. Earlier, she completed a bachelor of arts degree with a major in Mandarin and a minor in
marketing and worked at Lan Yuan (Dunedin Chinese Garden). In 2018 she moved to Wellington to study full-time circus training, fulfilling a dream she had had since seeing a Cirque Du Soleil show at the age of 8. The course was discontinued before she was able to complete
her third year but she majored in tightwire and adagio (partner balance work) and left with a diploma in performing arts. That presented opportunities to be involved in the LUX Light Festival and two WOW (World of Wearable of Arts) productions. She also continued with
ballet, sitting the Cecchetti advanced 1 examination in 2017.