A team of four girls aged 8 to 12 with St John emblazoned on their uniforms entered the classroom. Just in time, the paramedics had arrived.
''Do you have any pets?'', Angelique Price said, while wrapping patient Noah Miller's wound in a bandage. The small-talk impressively distracted him from the object impaled in his right foot.
The wound was fake. The girls were among 70 cadets competing in the St John Central Otago district youth competition in Cromwell yesterday.
There, cadets aged 6 to 18 from Ranfurly, Cromwell, Wanaka, Queenstown, Alexandra and Roxburgh were tested in first aid, care-giving, nursing and military-style drills.
St John Central Otago district youth manager Felicia McCrone said the St John cadet programme more popular than ever and there were about 2100 members in the South Island.
''Just speaking for Central Otago, all the groups are growing.
''The Cromwell group didn't exist five years ago.
''At the competition we have 30 kids from Ranfurly. That's a huge number for such a small town.''
The cadet programme was about leadership and teamwork with a focus on first aid, she said.
''I was really impressed in the standard of the competition. The junior teams were all very close, which bodes well for the future.''
The competition had been held in various forms since at least the 1980s, but this was its first time in Cromwell, she said.
Wakatipu won the senior team event and Wanaka won the intermediate section.
Lyndi McGregor, of Queenstown, was the senior individual winner and Tamara Hansen, of Cromwell, won the intermediate division.
Those teams and individuals will go to the regional competition in Greymouth at the end of September.
