College Principal

The fastest growing participation sport in America right now is Pickleball – described as a mix of pingpong, tennis and badminton. It is also taking off in Australia. According to The Australian newspaper (11 September 2023), it is a scaled down version of tennis with a court about a quarter the size of a tennis court and apparently, ‘it’s bringing out the worst in everyone.’ The journalist, Gerard Baker, reflects that frequent angry clashes are often features of the game and that the players’ behaviour reflects a broader disintegration in civility. He goes on to say that in this game, as in our world, he is seeing a soul sickness eating away at the very bonds of community. He writes that in a post-COVID world, it feels like people are more willing to openly confront each other, when in the past restraint and civility held sway.  

I begin my newsletter with this story because this behaviour is the antithesis of who we are as Catholic Dominicans. Timothy Radcliffe, priest, scholar and Dominican friar who served as a master of the Order of Preachers urges us to ‘find the charity and love to reach across and listen deeply so that together we may draw nearer to the light.’ As educators in the Dominican tradition, we teach our students to contemplate, to discern, to reason and to treat one another with dignity. There cannot be respect when we respond with aggression, rudeness or anger. Confrontation and angry clashes are exhausting, they put everyone on the defensive and show a lack of humility. The strength and connection in our community is born from love and every time we fail to treat each other with dignity it diminishes all of us. Santa Sabina College is a community that values restraint and civility. Our children need to learn that not everyone needs to know their opinion on everything, all the time. Sometimes, it’s better to be quiet. They need to learn that good manners are not a thing of the past, that ‘please’, ‘thank you’ and ‘I am sorry’ are ways we show respect and forgiveness. And they need to learn that aggression, frustration and anger are not behaviours we want to exhibit if we want to win friends and influence people. I don’t think we will be introducing Pickleball to our suite of co-curricular activities any time soon!

As the term comes to a close, we turn our attention to our Year 12 students who will complete their formal education with us next week. Next Monday they will attend their Year 12 Formal, and on Thursday 21 September we will hold the Graduation Assembly at the College around Dom’s Plot in the morning then we will attend the Graduation Mass and Dinner in the evening. It promises to be a week of lovely memories and I look forward to celebrating these milestones with our parents, teachers and all of our students. 

The Generations Breakfast was well attended last week and it was wonderful to see ex-students, parents, grandparents, aunts and siblings return to the College for this lovely tradition. Thank you to the Ex-Students’ Association for generously providing breakfast for everyone. 

We congratulate all of our sportspeople for their commitment to a wide variety of sporting and co-curricular activities in which they have participated and excelled this year. It was lovely to honour them all at the Sports Awards Dinner last week. Huge thanks to Mr Ramalho, our Director of Sports and Activities, for his leadership as well as Mr Dunlop, Primary Sports Coordinator and the amazing team in the Sports Administration Office. 

The inaugural Santa Sabina College Sports Lunch will be held on 10 November at Strathfield Golf Club, starting at midday. Please join us at what we hope will be a spectacular event. We have a great MC, guest speakers and much more at the event. The unveiling of the Master Plan will begin a new era of growth at the College, both for the Primary and Senior campus. We would like to fill Strathfield Golf Club so I do hope you can find the time to make this special event in our Calendar. You can book here.

Congratulations STEM experts Mia Khoury, Gabriella Khalil, Harriet Irwin and Annabelle Wong from Year 5 who have been shortlisted in Arludo’s National Game Design Challenge with their design Galaxy Jump. Help the students get to the national finals by voting here: https://arludo.com/gdc2023/

Go gently

Paulina Skerman
College Principal