St John Youth Cadets from around the country were challenged by a series of staged emergency scenarios in Queenstown over the weekend.
Situations posed at the St John national youth competitions included a girl whose hair had been caught in a woodworking machine, an unconscious girl suffering seizures on a tennis court and a bus accident with multiple victims, complete with full-size, smoking bus.
The cadets were judged on how they portrayed their clinical and communication skills as well as their drill and ceremonial style.
The 15 scenarios were a mix of individual, team and pair events.
St John community programmes director Sonya Gale said the 66 participants and their support crews had come from as far afield as the far north to the far south to compete for 21 trophies.
"It's all about building strong leaders within confident young people."
Each cadet represented one of three regions in the country.
"To get into their regional team we are talking about a good couple of years of being involved with St John - they would have had months of intensive training."
Going into each scenario, each cadet had no indication what to expect, and had to call upon their months of training in order to take the right action.
"They do their tests and then come back into the holding room, because of course, being a competition we have to make sure we maintain tight, strict, competition rules," Ms Gale said.
The major trophies were won by Johann Go from St John central region (champion individual); a South Island team consisting of Abbey Marshall, Keesha can Stijn, Bailey Hoar, Caitlin Wright, Jonothan Clayton (champion team); and St John Northern Region (champion region).
