Otakiri School's Rip Rugby team took part in the 2022 games. Photo: RNZ/ Photo/Leah Tebbutt
Australasia's largest junior sporting event, Zespri AIMS Games, kicks off in Tauranga on Saturday with over 14,000 young people taking part.
Tournament director Kelly Schischka said there was a "vibe like no other" in the city when it was games week.
AIMS Games is for 11 - 13-year-olds to compete in 27 different sports codes. It was established by four Bay of Plenty intermediate schools but had grown to involve 431 schools from New Zealand and the South Pacific.
Cambridge Middle School principal Daryl Gibbs attended the first games 22 years ago as a beginning teacher and had been involved in some way with the event ever since.
For the last five years he had been an advisory trustee for the games and the school had sent 109 students along this year.
Gibbs said he still bumped into students who went a decade ago who recalled it as a great experience. He said some students would remember it forever.
Often, sports teams in small towns played the same handful of oppositions all year.
"To go from playing the other four or five schools you always play to be playing someone from the South Island, or someone from Northland, is quite exciting," Gibbs said.
He said being in a team taught young people the value of turning up for each other.
Sport New Zealand liked junior sports to focus on participation and trying different physical activities. Gibbs said the word 'elite' was not used in association with AIMS Games, but he said it was still highly competitive.
"There is a mix, there are some sports where you have to have a grading to make it through, there is a range of grading so there might be children who are fairly new to a sport, and then there will be others who are the best in the country."
A student who was the best in the country was Mila. She attended as a year seven last year and came first in cross-country and cross-country mountain biking. She said it was a shock at first to see so many kids at the events.
"At the cross-country mountain biking they played this heartbeat sound before we started our race, and it was really scary. But eventually when we started racing it was just really fun."
She was competing in the same sports at this year's games but was not assuming she would repeat last year's success and said her aim was to get in the top three.
"I think people have just got a lot more competitive over the last year," she said.
Callen and Eliana were attending AIMS Games for the first time and Callen said his friends had told him it would be a lot of fun.
"There's a lot more opportunities than just the sport you play, you can make lots of friends," he said.
Schischka said it was a really special event for the young people involved.
"They have trained all year, they've fundraised all year, they're having a week-long sleep over with their friends while they are here, it's a really incredible experience," she said.
Providing this opportunity for students took time and energy. Cambridge Middle School sports coordinator Anita Hawkins said she would be starting to plan for next year as soon as this year's games was over. But she said it was worth it.
"Aside from the sport and the winning and the losing, I see a lot of amazing memories, a lot of new friendships are made, a lot of resilience, a lot of students amaze themselves by how much they can actually achieve and how much they can give and how they learn to lose and how they learn to win," she said.
Schischka said venues for the event had to be booked two years in advance and there was an enormous amount of work involved.
"For us, it's just such a privilege to be at this point where it's almost game time," she said.
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