Holidays over but the adventure continues

Sophie Lenihan and Gemma Loveday together with Jane Edwards from Foundation for Youth Development, helicopter pilot, Titirangi Primary School principal Gary Pearce and LynnMall marketing manager, Linh Luong.

With children settling back into school mode, two lucky students from Titirangi Rudolf Steiner School, two from Titirangi Primary and four from Willowbank Primary have just had another exciting adventure as the winners of the Fit2Fly extreme adventure day out.

During the July school holidays, more than 2,700 children tested their skills on the specially built Fit2Fly adventure courses in LynnMall and Botany Town Centre in Auckland.

Keeping kids active was the main aim of the course with participants running through tyres, sliding under cargo nets, balancing on low beams, navigating obstacles and shooting hoops.

The course also helped raise money for a great cause. Lynn-Mall and Botany Town Centre set up the Fit2Fly courses together with the Foundation for Youth Development (FYD) to raise funds and awareness of FYD’s Project K Programme.

Children and teenagers paid $1 for a turn and went in the draw for a chance to win an extreme adventure day out. A total of $2,900 was raised for Project K during the course of the two week holidays.

Titirangi Primary School’s Gemma Loveday and Willowbank Primary’s Jack Ashton are the lucky winners of the ultimate adventure day out, which was drawn randomly from over 2,700 entries.

Gemma completed the course over four times during the holidays and her best shot was 16 seconds.

“I’m so excited and looking forward to taking my best friend Sophie Lenihan” says nine-year-old Gemma.

Jack completed the course “about 20 times!” during the holidays to better his time – his best shot was 12 seconds.

“I’m really looking forward to it. I got straight on Wikipages when I found out, to tell all of my classmates.”

Gemma will be joined by two other lucky Titirangi Rudolf Steiner School students as the school had the largest number of entrants into Fit2Fly, which means they won two places on the adventure day.

The school nominated two students to join Gemma and her chosen friend. Jack was also joined by two more lucky students from Willowbank Primary as they also had the largest number of entries.

They were be the envy of all their classmates when they were picked up from school in a chopper earlier this month to complete a big adventure.

The extreme adventure day saw them flown to Karamatura Valley in Huia, where they took part in a series of adventurous activities such as mountain biking and abseiling.

“I’ve never been mountain biking or abseiling, except once I did try a bit of abseiling down a little hill at the back of my cousins house,” says Gemma.

The top three participating schools also walked away with some LynnMall Shopping Centre voucher prizes for the highest percentage of entries.

First prize ($2,000 of vouchers) went to Titirangi Rudolf Steiner School, second prize ($1,000 of vouchers) went to St Dominics School and third prize ($500 of vouchers) went to Fruitvale School. And, ($2,000 of vouchers) went to Willowbank Primary, second prize ($1,000 of vouchers) went to Brookby Primary and third prize ($500 of vouchers) went to Our Lady Star of the Sea School.