Basketball was non-existent until Rahiri Bennett (Top Right) arrived in our area.  Over the last 3 years he has built the sport in our college with great successes.  He not only coaches one but four college teams, for the last three years.  These teams being the u17 and U19 boys and the U17 and U19 girls.  Rahiri devotes all of his Sunday, Monday and Wednesday nights to trainings as well as attending games on Friday.  On these Friday night games, he begins coaching the U17 boys at 4.45pm and doesn’t finish coaching until 10pm.  He not only coaches in the basketball season but throughout the holiday periods.  He is continually organising training camps and inter-school games for our teams. 

Rahiri has no personal attachments to the college, he coaches purely for the love of the sport and the students.  He goes beyond the call of duty, a lot of us are involved in other sports and he is always supporting on the sideline of our netball games or with the boys at their rugby on Saturdays.  Rahiri has an absolute mana among the students and is highly respected as a coach and a mentor.  He is naturally motivated and always enthusiastic. 

Each year we have more and more students wanting to be coached by Rahiri.  Our successes as teams are a credit to his commitment.  He always makes time to organise individual sponsorship and provide playing gear, boots and transport for these players.






The last two years all four teams Rahiri coaches have reached the finals.  In 2007 three of the four teams won their divisions.  Rahiri managed to develop a group of 15 girls who had never played basketball before. And not only did these girls successfully play their season, but ended up winning the final.  Having successfully reached the finals, entitled all four teams to be eligible for the open division this year.  Mahurangi College, a small county school has had the opportunity to compete with larger Auckland schools, the likes of Westlake and Rangitoto College.  Rahiri is a coach who is exceedingly worthy of this award and all of Mahurangi College would agree.