We have received word from St Bernard’s that we must have as many of our eligible fencers vaccinated as possible due to the Ministry of Education’s requirements. What this means for you is that all of our fencers, parents visiting classes, volunteers and coordinators that are over theage of 16 must have their first COVID 19 vaccine before the 15th of November.

This is stipulated by the government under the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Vaccination) Amendment order (No 3) 2021. If you have not received your first dose of the COVID 19 vaccine, it is URGENT that you get yourself booked in for as soon as possible if you wish to continue to participate in our classes from November 15th onwards. Unfortunately, you HAVE to be vaccinated to attend sessions at St Bernards.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding this, please feel free to reach out to us by emailing huttvalleyfencing@gmail.com.

Please note that fencing will be continuing over the holidays. Our senior classes that operate on Mondays and Thursdays will be running from 6.30pm till 8.30pm. The junior class will be running from 6.30pm – 7.30pm on Thursdays. Saturday classes will continue to have the same time slot of 11am – 1.00pm.

The dates of the sessions are as follows; Mondays the 4th and 11th, Thursdays the 7th and 14th and Saturday the 9th and 16th. 

I am pleased to announce that our training can resume almost as normal from Thursday the 16th of September onwards. There are a number of things that we require from each of our club members.

Contact Registering

We require that everyone who can has to scan in using the COVID tracing app. Not only that, but we also have a requirement from the school for contact tracing forms to be filled out.

Arrival and Departure

Nobody can enter the school’s gym before 6.50pm at the absolute earliest. This is to allow a smooth transition between each group using the gym and to minimise unnecessary contact between other groups. If there are any students or other members of groups using the gym facility when we arrive, we are required to wait until they leave the gym and can not enter the building at all until they have gone.

ALL CLASS MEMBERS MUST BE VACATED FROM THE PREMISE AT THE END OF THEIR SESSION.

This means that the seniors must be outside of the gym by 9pm on Mondays and Thursdays and the Saturday session participants must be out by 1pm.

Dropping off and picking up students must occur outside of the gymnasium and masks must be worn for all throughout this change over.

Occupant Restrictions

There is a hard max on 50 people using any indoor space in Level 2 which is a guideline that we must also observe. I don’t believe that we would reach this cap but it is something to keep in mind. 

SPECTATORS ARE UNFORTUNATELY NOT WELCOME TO ATTEND IN LEVEL 2.

I apologies for any inconvenience that this may cause but we look forward to being able to get back into training again.

We are hoping that we will be able to start fencing this week on either Monday or Thursday but we still haven’t heard back from the school. Once we hear back from them on Monday morning, we will be able to update you at Monday lunchtime what the plan is from this point onwards. 

Thank you for your patience throughout this and hopefully we will be seeing you all again this Monday.

Due to the Level 4 COVID mandates, we will not be running any further sessions until we can get an update from St Bernard’s. We have cancelled the Saturday and Monday sessions and we are waiting to see how likely we will be able to run at level 3.

We will update you as soon as we hear of any new developments that the school provides.

Stay safe.