Class Act ten years on: Taieri College

2011: Julia Gorinski had won the Otago-Southland Secondary Schools Road Cycling Championship and the South Island secondary schools road cycling time trial. Her team also won the Otago secondary schools girls’ rugby competition. She hoped to study veterinary science.

2021: Wanting to get back into team sports, Gorinski gave up cycling soon after leaving school and returned to rugby. She is now in her eighth season with the Otago Spirit women’s rugby team, where she has played nearly 50 games at lock and won the Farah Palmer Cup championship final in 2019. She also plays for the University of Otago. Based in Dunedin, she is an agri-business manager for Westpac.

 

 

2011: Aaron Kennedy had gained distinction passes in the ICAS Science Competition for three years in a row and was selected to attend the National Youth Science Forum in Canberra. He was first in year 11 science in 2009 and first in year 12 chemistry in 2010. He planned to study chemistry.

2021: Kennedy is doing a postdoctoral fellowship in biomedical engineering, working at the University of New South Wales. He completed his doctorate in pure chemistry but more recently has been working in applied chemistry (developing films for crop growth) and biochemistry (developing devices to make cell and gene therapy affordable).