Sports Faction Carnivals

[Silent Alarm]

High school doesn't count because no one does it and you have stupid names, usually referencing Prime Ministers or explorers, but how about those primary school rivalries?

It seems no matter who you speak to, blue were dominant. And no one liked red.

Gold won swimming pretty comprehensively every year but were in the middle rungs for athletics. Blue killed aths and were shocking at swimming, which lead me to the belief they were poms with massive sock tans. Red would go bottom for six years straight but then somehow end up top for two years, and usually win it through swimming despite their horrible athletics abilities. Green were worse swimmers but racked up a lot of third placings, and always ended up with a random champion girl and a general 'third position but unlucky' vibe. We were all distinct.

For me, I was in gold faction. We were great swimmers (breastroke and freestyle champ here) and usually okay in the athletics. We lost all combined until my six and seven years, when we somehow won and I felt like Shane Crawford in 2008. It was a good moment. I remember the best looking girl in the year below looking at me after we won...

What faction were you? Did your school also do a father-son like family rule? Was your little sister ten times the better sportsperson and your dad liked her more? Did your school have stupid colours like white and purple? Did you ever be faction captain?

 

[Richard Cranium]

Was in Yellow. We stunk.

 

[BALKAN]

I was in Red. I remember being younger and the older Red kids dominating every athletics carnival. Unfortunately my year group dropped the torch on this one, and we got destroyed by Blue and Green (Yellow always seemed to be s**t at everything)

I was never a house captain but I was a prefect. I'm sure I still have my badge somewhere

 

[Bomberboyokay]

Blue. We never won the whole 7 years

 

[akkaps]

So this is basically school houses thing?

I went to 5 different schools. So here comes the list:

1. Green [P-2] - named after the four streets that surounded the school.
2. Red [3-6] - also named after the four streets that surrounded the school. My house was smaller compared to other and we really didn't do well at school sports. Although I was proud at coming 3rd at Aths in Yr when I was house captain.
3. Red [4] - again named after the four streets surrounding the school.
4. Blue [7-8] - named after explorers and inventors. The school went from Prep to 8, and every Friday there would be inter-house sports for Yr5-8s. Again my house was s**t at sport and didn't win anything interesting.
5. Green [9-12] - named after former headmasters and prominent people of the school. It wasn't big in Yr9, but from Yr10-12, we'd have weekly Inter-House sports. I really care for it during this time mostly because the captains have priority to their friends to compete for the limited spaces and I wasn't one of them.

Also, during Yr9 Camp we where given different 'factions' for our 8 week stay where we'd compete one night a week against another color in some random made up game at the local basketball centre. I was in Red, and we did pretty well until the Final week where we went from first to last.

 

[Plugger35]

We had Mitchell (Red), Stirling (Yellow), Forrest (Green) and Dampier (Blue)

I got put in Dampier which I liked as Blue was my favourite colour but we sucked balls as a faction.

Mitchell and Stirling were like the Hawthorn and Geelong of recent years and Forrest and Dampier were like Melbourne and Carlton*.



*or Freo and St Kilda

 

[Silent Alarm]

I was a primary school prefect and it shames to this day.

Was swimming captain for most of primary school though. That also shames me. The most good any swimmer gets is an Uncle Toby's ad.

 

[TheFreshBanana]

Always been green through primary and high school

 

[Plugger35]

It was like the Olympics at our school, I remember the Year 6s and 7s got to run relay races at the end.

Dampier was right up there one year with Mitchell and Stirling and then me and my Dampier mate Brad dropped the baton on the final changeover.

Then the recriminations started back in the Dampier bullpen "You dropped it", "You didn't hand it to me properly you campaigner".

This all unfolded in front of our Year 1s and 2s who we were supposed to be setting an example for.

Ugly scenes.

 

[Catfish Alley]

We didn't do it in primary school. Only high school. I was Silver. Kind of known as nerds in years 7 and 8 but ended up being all-rounders.

Mango was the sports team.
Ebony were the drama/music guys.
Blue and Gold were the popular guys.
Purple were the rebels.
Red were the brains.
Green were a mix like us.

I was originally placed in Purple because my sister was in that house. They sucked though and I requested a change about 2 weeks in.

 

[Roobs321]

I was yellow all the way through primary and high school, and we were generally the smallest team that punched above its weight (and more often than not seemed to be the last alphabetical quarter of surnames). I liked that we had quality over quantity. I think we had the least sense of identity, the chatter was generally all about the blue/red/green. Green seemed to cop it the most with "Green, green, snot machine" (primary school shenanigans, and I think the Canberra Raiders were also just coming off a strong Rugby League era to boot).

At my first Primary School I think the Houses were just the colours, and from Year 1-Year 12 I was schooled in an area which had a strong indigenous heritage and community, and a lot of indigenous place names, so the house names were generally named after someone or something of indigenous origin. I can't recall the Primary School names, but High School was Wellington after a former female student who went on to state or national team representation.

I think we used to do well in swimming, as a lot of us surf club kids had surnames in the S-W range and therefore slotted into yellow. One of my favourite school carnival moments was being in the winning 4x100 freestyle relay in Year 8. Winning relays cheered on by massive crowds are always the best. Unfortunately in Primary School in certain age groups we often struggled to put together a relay team due to our small constituency. I recall voluntarily going in every swimming race in Year 6 (and I hate breaststroke and struggle to survive 50m Butterfly), simply because there were no other Yellows to represent.

As a kid my specialty was the endurance cardio events (I was a disciplined mentally tough kid who mostly did cross country and surf club outside of school), so generally the longer a swimming/running race went on the greater my chances of winning. Athletics generally wasn't my forte (my top speed and manual dexterity were mediocre until adulthood, and I was barely 5 foot prior to turning 14).

 

[class78]

We just had novelty s**t like egg and spoon racing, and relays. Was a proud member of the CTK Gold Threepeat.

 

[little graham]

I was always red after the swimming carnival. I was always blue after sportsday. One thing I never was, was yellow, I'd enter anything I could. I didn't get into green until after school.

 

[radiojake]

My first primary school only had 3 groups - Bower (Yellow) Sturt (Blue) Hart (Red) - Bower, Sturt and Hart were streets that bordered the school. I was in Sturt (RUB THEM IN THE DIRT) - Bower always won


But my 2nd Primary school was stupid - each year they just randomly assigned kids to the four different colours, so you changed every year... I liked sports day, for obvious reasons, but man, what a buzz kill to not have any continuity with it at all...

 

[Gough]

I've never heard them called factions before, houses, yes, factions, never. Must be a weird WA thing, like bitching about the GST.

 

[Upgrayedd]

Gold reporting

Went back to back to back, Pipped by Red by a single digit point in year 4, then again back to back to back

#dynasty

Was a gun 800m runner. same Second in year 4-5, and won it in year 6 and 7 when this guy who was 2 years older then me who always swept it would smash everyone else. I still hate you Tendai. Your faction sucked and never won anything. Fitting you were drafted into another club which wore green and is a failure.

I still open the vault and look at my second and third placed ribbons for division 2 sprints and long distance running. I bet you would trade your whole AFL career for a chance to win something like primary school faction carnival

 

[Plugger35]

I've never heard them called factions before, houses, yes, factions, never. Must be a weird WA thing, like bitching about the GST.

We had houses at high school but it was factions at primary school in WA.

No one really gave a s**t about it in high school being surly rebellious teenagers that hated everything but it was srs business at primary school.

Sports carnival day at primary school everyone would rock up wearing their factions colours, all the girls would bring their dolls, teddies, cabbage patch kids, care bears etc dressed in faction colours, there were balloons, streamers, banners all in faction colours, it was a massive deal.

If you turned up to school not wearing your factions colours you were about as popular as a KKK member at a Martin Luther King rally.

 

[Allikat]

I was always green. Didn't have a dominant faction at school though. Except last year of high school where I was Faction Captain so obviously we were the greatest.

 

[Gough]

I don't remember them at primary school, but it was the early eighties, and the education department was still full of hippies. We had them in high school, I was a non participant.

 

[Illinois Nazi]

Year 1-3 I was in Green. Then the school changed them from "factions" to "houses" (named after the four streets around the school) and I was in the red one.

High school I was again in the red one (named after WA Olympic gold medallists - there had probably only ever been four of them at the time).

Funnily enough, my wife was also in the red house at her school (private school with about 17 different houses), and our three kids have always been in the red house across four different schools between them.

 

[Silent Alarm]

We had houses at high school but it was factions at primary school in WA.

No one really gave a s**t about it in high school being surly rebellious teenagers that hated everything but it was srs business at primary school.

Sports carnival day at primary school everyone would rock up wearing their factions colours, all the girls would bring their dolls, teddies, cabbage patch kids, care bears etc dressed in faction colours, there were balloons, streamers, banners all in faction colours, it was a massive deal.

If you turned up to school not wearing your factions colours you were about as popular as a KKK member at a Martin Luther King rally.

Yeah, same here. We barely even bothered in high school though. I think there was one swimming carnival but no one went. As soon as you hit that time, the only ribbons you care about are ribbed-ones.

I also remember the joy and excitement of the faction carnival. You rocked up and all the classes were empty, it was always sunny, you all waited for your busses to the athletics ovals and when you got there it was peaking. Plus if you ran all your races, you could go home early. I remember our school had both green and gold polos. Blue and red got specially made polos, green got special 'light' green ones, but gold was stuck with our boring regular uniform. I always hated that.

Arguably my favourite memory was the one year we held it at our own school oval instead of the main athletics park (think Waverley for the '91 Grand Final). This kid, also in my faction, huge but totally useless at every single sport, got this kid who had a surname that rhymed with Jabbed-a-Rabbit, swung him around so much that he was going up and down in the air, let go, then kicked him in the guts – perfectly timed – into a goal post. He sat out the rest of the day obviously. He laughed to himself, probably scored some cred with chicks despite his tombstone teeth, and was unofficially crowned Champion Boy.

Did anyone else have interschool? It was never the same. You always thought there'd be some camaraderie but you realised 70% of the people there became ultra-serious knobs and it lost the fun. I also reckon it was a bit of the England national soccer team conundrum – you're too competitive against one another domestically, that you're unable to play together representatively.

 

[BotsMaster]

Always been green through primary and high school

Same. Never won a damn carnival the whole time I was at school.

Also never owned a green shirt to wear on those days other than my school shirt which wasn't suitable. I remember my primary school houses were Sturt (green) and Mitchell (red).

 

[Plugger35]

Yeah, same here. We barely even bothered in high school though. I think there was one swimming carnival but no one went. As soon as you hit that time, the only ribbons you care about are ribbed-ones.

I also remember the joy and excitement of the faction carnival. You rocked up and all the classes were empty, it was always sunny, you all waited for your busses to the athletics ovals and when you got there it was peaking. Plus if you ran all your races, you could go home early. I remember our school had both green and gold polos. Blue and red got specially made polos, green got special 'light' green ones, but gold was stuck with our boring regular uniform. I always hated that.

Arguably my favourite memory was the one year we held it at our own school oval instead of the main athletics park (think Waverley for the '91 Grand Final). This kid, also in my faction, huge but totally useless at every single sport, got this kid who had a surname that rhymed with Jabbed-a-Rabbit, swung him around so much that he was going up and down in the air, let go, then kicked him in the guts – perfectly timed – into a goal post. He sat out the rest of the day obviously. He laughed to himself, probably scored some cred with chicks despite his tombstone teeth, and was unofficially crowned Champion Boy.

Did anyone else have interschool? It was never the same. You always thought there'd be some camaraderie but you realised 70% of the people there became ultra-serious knobs and it lost the fun. I also reckon it was a bit of the England national soccer team conundrum – you're too competitive against one another domestically, that you're unable to play together representatively.

We had an oval next door to our primary school where we held the afternoon running races, relays, hurdles etc. The little kids did s**t like tunnel ball.

The morning was doing sports drills around the school like shooting basketball hoops and hop scotch where you collected points for your faction.

We had interschool athletics carnivals in high school where we got buses to the old Perry Lakes stadium where the best of our athletics students participated, I wasn't one of them.

The rest of us just went there to sit in the grandstand cheering for our school, well we were supposed to anyway, we were actually trolling our own school.

I went to the late great City Beach SHS and we were chanting "Shitty Bitch" when the teachers tried to get a "City Beach" chant going.

We were a small high school and had no chance up against the likes of Churchlands so we were just there for the lulz.

 

[Gough]

Athletics is ridiculous, one of the reasons I liked to play cricket is that you're either walking slowly, or sitting most of the time.

 

[Illinois Nazi]

I went to the late great City Beach SHS and we were chanting "Shitty Bitch" when the teachers tried to get a "City Beach" chant going.

We were a small high school and had no chance up against the likes of Churchlands so we were just there for the lulz.

What Primary School were you at? I was at City Beach Primary late 70s/early 80s