Cook Islands Games Golf and League Sevens

The golf competition took place over four days and was well supported although, as with most codes, the outer islands were mostly represented by people living on Rarotonga.
League sevens had just three vaka teams, Te Au O Tonga, Takitumu and Puaikura.
Usually with league sevens and rugby sevens Raro-based players form OI teams but Monday evening probably wasn’t a very good time. The rugby sevens on Saturday managed to find six teams but even that isn’t as many as when there are stand-alone competitions with no other sports going on.

Cook Islands Games bowls and basketball

The Cook Islands Games are over and now we will see what lessons have been learned.
Of the two codes in this video, bowls and basketball, the bowlers looked as though they were having a great time. It’s a very social sport! The clubhouse was humming and everybody, from young kids to grannies and granddads, was enjoying it. Our bowlers have been to many international events and organised several themselves. If other Pacific bowlers are like ours it should be an excellent competition at the mini games.
Basketball isn’t one of the mini games codes but was added to the Cook Islands games to give the players a tournament for this year. The code went to the Pacific Games in Samoa and was disappointed to be left out of the mini games.

Cook Islands Games sailing competition

The sailing competition was supposed to take place in Aitutaki. That’s where the Pacific Mini Games regatta will be held in September. But there was no money to get people, and possibly boats, to the island so it was relocated to Muri lagoon.
Fortunately the sailing fraternity have been very active in holding regattas in outer islands. In fact they’ve trained a lot of youngsters particularly in Aitutaki and Manihiki who are now out-sailing the old hands. When it comes to the mini games the sailing event will no doubt be efficiently run even though this practice event hasn’t been ideal.
The weather’s been great though.
The race shown in the video is the radial rig Laser class. It had only three competitors although the previous two races had twelve and five respectively.
The winner was Teau McKenzie for Te Au O Tonga, followed by Helema William for Purapura zone and Anne Tierney for Takitumu.