The College by the Harbour - St Aloysius

Before School Activities
Swimming: Mr Steve Badger and Damien Pasfield
It’s 5.30 am and still dark. Boys are dozing in the front seats
of cars, towels wrapped around their necks, their Speedos
on underneath their tracksuits. The North Sydney Olympic
Pool is already alight and alive, and the first trains carry early
commuters to work on the Bridge above. Luna Park is merely
dark shadows. Our swimming team, all goggle-eyed plunge like
dolphins into the rectangle of blue and commence their first set
of the several kilometres they will each swim this morning.
They are a remarkably friendly and likeable group who have
chosen this sport because they love it despite the early rising
and the arduousness of the training. They all swim evenly and
with grace under the tuition of the College Swimming Coach,
Mr Steve Badger.
Back at school from its depths comes the belting sound of
a ghetto blaster; its pulsing, percussive music urging a group of
over 40 boys through their routines on a fitness circuit in the
College Gym. Mr Ben Gavan, one of the PDHPE teachers,
has designed the course and is in the thick of it with the boys
as they climb ropes, pump light weights, jump, do sit-ups, roll
on large inflated balls, run up fifteen flights of stairs. The boys
are all ages, sizes and levels of fitness. No one is excluded. In
the weights’ room, surrounded by mirrors, older boys do the
heavy stuff. Biceps bulge, pectorals swell, thighs thicken. It is
too glib to dismiss all this as mere vanity. These boys have
discovered the sense of well-being and confidence which being
fit bestows. They are relaxed and sociable even at this hour.
Mime, left to right: Matthew Perkes, Jean-Paul Bell
(Famous Australian Mime), Joseph Crews
From the heights on the
fourth and fifth floors come
much more melodic sounds.
Already, a very different
group of boys have ported
their violins and cellos and
trumpets and saxophones
and trombones and violins
and violas and double bass
up the steep 84 steps to the
music rooms for early
rehearsals. Teachers having
quickly gulped cups of
bracing coffee conduct, hum
tunes and urge their pupils Music: Angus Ryan- Cello
on. The concentration and
focus command reverence.
At 7.45 am tables are being laid in the large room off the
playground with mega-sized bowls, mega-containers of milk
and huge boxes of Nutragrain. Soon the swimmers will file in,
their bleached hair still smelling of chlorine, to quell their
ravenousness.
Next door, Mr Des Sheehan and Mr Michael Donohoe
(SAC 1967), two lawyer-parents, sit in a circle, the Bridge
arcing through the windows in front of them leading boys
through the rules of our trial system for the inter-school Mock
Trial competition. These are the intelligentsia, the future
advocates and prosecutors in our legal system, the would-be
politicians. They have already eaten, no Nutragrain for them.
Anyway, it is not on grain alone that man lives.
In the corner of the
quadrangle boys are
pushing and shoving to
gain access to the St
Aloysius’ equivalent of the
soup kitchen. Here
Student Representative
Council members serve
bread and jam to those
who have left home
without breakfast. This
will see them through to
recess when the Canteen
will be open.
Fitness Training: Harry Grace
Finally, Mr John Caillard’s
jogging squad are arriving back from their run across the Bridge
and around the Rocks. They have taken in the rising sun above
the Heads across the waters of the Harbour, been vibrated by
the buses, trucks and cars heading across beside them to the
metropolis and journeyed around the old and relatively quiet
back streets of Walsh Bay. The runners are flushed, perspiring
and eager for a shower. They’ll have to be quick. Soon the bell
will ring and classes commence. They will join the others for
six hours of lessons. For all of these boys, though, the day’s work
began much earlier. They enter the remainder refreshed, relaxed
and feeling good. Mens sana in corpore sano (a healthy mind in a
healthy body).
Mr Robert Schneider (SAC 1958)
Senior School Staff
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