Cheers for Boots

Rondebosch Boys’ High School
Cheers for Boots

In June of 2022, Rondebosch Boys’ High School, was approached by Mr Mike Mavovana, the inspiring Headmaster of Hector Pietersen High School, to assist with its drive to create a pervasive sports programme at the school. Mike Senior is the father to Rondebosch Boys’ High School legend, Mike Junior, who played school, provincial and national rugby, and has gone on to represent Maties at University. Mike Junior was a record-breaking 100m sprinter and a prolific try scorer in the very good school side of 2015 and 2016.

Drawing from his own children’s experience with sport, Mike Senior’s vision is to build sport and to provide excellent facilities at his school, and thereby make a social impact on the Walacedene youth. His challenge is that his school is hugely under-resourced, whereby 1332 learners and several sporting codes, have to vie for time on the single field available to them.  In a community where buying boots for sport is far out of their reach, Mike’s appeal was for a donation of second-hand rugby boots for the girls’ and boys’ teams.  While this appeal was being responded to by Rondebosch Boys’ High School’s Outreach Society, our cheerleaders won a sum of cash in the KFM Sanlam Marathon War Cry Competition, and the leadership from Matric 2022 asked if a portion of their winnings could be used to give back to the sporting ambitions of learners at a school that lacked the resources available at Rondebosch. In a moment of perfect synergy, this led to the Matrics donating R20 000 of their winnings, and the amount which was supplemented by the Outreach Society who had raised R10 000 in the course of the year. One of our Rondebosch parents works for TFG and suggested we approach them for vouchers from Totalsports, so that the school could buy boots in bulk. Totalsports very generously added R25 000 to the pot, and this has left Hector Pietersen High School with the enviable conundrum of what equipment to purchase. Although how to spend the windfall is entirely up to Mike and his team, at a thumb suck, R55 000 at R500 per pair could buy 110 boots! We are proud as a school whose being is deeply embedded in sport, and where our boys derive so much joy from playing, that we are able to pass some of the love of the game on to another generation.

Thank you to the boys for shouting their lungs out to win the funds, to Totalsports for their immense generosity, and to KFM and its listeners for recognising the Rondebosch Boys’ High School gees to a point where all of this became possible. This is just the tip of the ice for Mike Mavovana, and we appeal to other schools and communities to find out how they can help develop the courts and fields to realise his dream for the learners of Hector Pietersen High School.

Shaun Simpson
Headmaster
Rondebosch Boys’ High School