Wellington College Runathon 2025
Wellington College’s ‘Super Six’ are a group of dedicated Year 13 students who plan and deliver the school’s charitable efforts each year, donating all proceeds to selected Wellington-based and national charities.
Each year, students are invited to apply to be Super Six members and undergo an interview and selection process. Out of 50+ applicants, the chosen Super Six members for 2025 are Connell Squires, Jesse Rumball-Smith, Theo Garratt, Harvey Walker, Thomas Beaglehole-Smith, and Gethyn Healy.
The group is formed in August of the previous year and promptly begin planning for the next school year’s fundraising activities. Every year, the main event in the fundraising calendar is WC Runathon, a charity fun run that has taken place at the school for over 26 years.
The Runathon began as a way to engage students in both physical endurance and community service. The event not only fosters school spirit but also teaches students the value of giving back. Throughout its history, the Runathon has successfully raised over one million dollars for various charities.
Five charities are selected by a school-wide voting process for their relevance to both the school and the Wellington community. The selected charities for 2025 are KidsCan, The Wellington Boys’ and Girls’ Institute (BGI), The Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand, World Vision, and Wellington Rape Crisis, each receiving an equal share of the funds raised.
The Super Six set themselves a lofty fundraising goal of $130k for the 2025 school year, a 70% increase on the school’s 2024 fundraising total.
“We wanted a mix of international and local charities, covering some of the issues we thought would be important to our community. Having a large fundraising goal forced us to rethink the basics of the Runathon, and we quickly realised that we’d need some out of the box ideas”, says Thomas.
To reach this target, the boys focussed on increasing student engagement across the entire school by gamifying the event with a custom-built Runathon app. The app made it easier for students and their supporters to donate online, while also rewarding students with ‘golden tickets’ for completing Runathon laps, donations, winning carnival games, and recognition from teachers for good behaviour in class.
Each golden ticket put the students in the draw to win from the prize pool, meaning everyone, sporting inclined or not, had the chance to participate and win. The pool included sponsor prizes such as vouchers to local restaurants, and school based prizes like a premium car park on school grounds for one term, and full day elevator passes to use in the school’s Tower Block which is normally off-limit to students.
“Having experienced four years of Runathons, it felt like student engagement, especially in the senior cohorts, had been decreasing. Developing the app was game-changing and is a legacy that we can proudly hand over for future Runathons, and potentially other schools, to continue making a difference” says Jesse.
Alongside the app and prize incentives, they changed the school timetable on the event day to make it more accessible for students to participate, and increased the number of student run food stalls by five-fold. The artificial turf was filled with activities for the students that weren’t running laps, and the famous Runathon waterslide was reinstated after a hiatus from the event.
“The Runathon Carnival and waterslide were super popular. It was all about involving boys who weren’t keen on running laps and it really added to the atmosphere we were trying to create” adds Thomas.
Through donations, merchandise and food stall sales, and event sponsors, the 2025 Runathon event raised an impressive $128,000, with $25,000 donated directly through the new event app. Over 15,000 laps were completed, equivalent to a total distance of over 8,600km travelled, which equates to running the length of New Zealand six times over.
Alongside the good feelings of accomplishment and giving back to the community, the boys gained invaluable experience from organising the event.
“I learned a lot about professional communication and networking during this time. I was emailing and calling dozens of companies every week with Harvey, organising sponsors and negotiating merchandise deals. We had to follow up constantly, pitch ideas, and build genuine relationships with local businesses” says Theo.
While Thomas recounts; “I’d go home and tell my Mum and Dad about how the Runathon was going, and they’d say, ‘Sounds just like work.’ I think that sums it up perfectly. It’s pretty rare as a kid to be given the opportunity to run an event, and the responsibility is yours if it goes wrong. I think that was the perfect amount of pressure that meant we were forced to learn all the small skills: communication, building trust, collaborating as a team, and the list goes on.”
With a few more fundraising events in the calendar, the boys hope to reach their goal of $130,000 for 2025 and inspire the next Super Six to top their record fundraising efforts. They have all come away from their year as Super Six members having gained valuable transferable skills for life after school, and have been inspired to tackle future projects that address problems they care about.
“I’m sure all the boys would agree, it was absolute chaos throughout the day of the Runathon, with all the problems we had to solve on the fly while multitasking 100 other situations. After all the hard work we put in during the 6 months beforehand, I’ve never felt so rewarded in my life, and I couldn’t be more proud of the Super Six boys” says Harvey.
