Maunganui crowned inaugural ŌTC Maunga Games dodgeball champions

Maunganui turned weeks of lunchtime dodgeball into the first ŌTC Maunga Games championship, emerging as the inaugural winners in a competition built on unbelievable catches, lightning-fast dodges and clutch finishes. Ōtūmoetai College’s July 3 sports roundup put Maunganui at the top of a new house-sport bracket that has already taken on the feel of a proper school tradition.

The format gave the title extra weight. Ōtūmoetai College describes the Maunga Games as competitive games played between its five Maunga houses, and a 2025 roundup showed how the concept works in practice, with one sport played across two consecutive Monday lunchtimes in the Action Centre, in round-robin style, with three-minute games, one point for a win and half a point for a tie. That setup rewards repeated effort rather than one-off flashes, and it gave students multiple chances to influence the standings over time.

That structure is part of why the dodgeball result matters beyond a single house win. The school’s earlier Maunga Games coverage opened with netball, where Ōtanewainuku dominated, before the series moved through other sports later in the term, including futsal, basketball and badminton. By the time Maunganui were crowned in dodgeball, the competition had already shown it could sustain interest across several events, and dodgeball added a fast, high-variance game that suited the lunchtime format.

Ōtūmoetai College sits in the Bay of Plenty as a co-educational Year 9-13 school, and its sport programme stresses broad participation, life skills and opportunities across summer and winter codes. The college says about 24% of its students are Māori, with many affiliating to Ngāti Ranginui, a detail that fits the way the Maunga Games have been framed around house identity as well as competition. In that setting, Maunganui’s dodgeball title became more than a line in a roundup. It set the first benchmark for a championship that can now be chased, defended and measured against every year to come.