‘Bally Boys’ Row for 24 Hours to Change 500 Lives - Including their Own
It’s not often you can support a charity through fundraising and then directly benefit from the funds you helped raise.
But that’s exactly what happened when ‘Bally Boys’ high school on Sydney’s northern beaches got behind Gotcha4Life’s 24 Hour Row to raise funds for mental fitness.
An incredible effort saw students from the Balgowlah Boys Campus of Northern Beaches Secondary College raise almost $17,000 - more than any other school in Australia, and the second highest funds raised of any team participating in the 24 Hour Row.
That tally was enough to fund Gotcha4Life Tomorrow Man workshops for more than 500 high school students - including over 200 Year 10 Bally Boys who got to experience the impact of their fundraising first hand a few weeks after the Row.
Balgowlah Boys Student support officer Sara Lewis and rowing coach Kieran Kobelke heard about the 24 Hour Row and, together with the incoming prefect body, spread the word with boys and staff, encouraging them to sign up to 15 minute rowing slots across the 24 hour period.
Ergonomic rowing machines were set up between a gelato shop and church on iconic Manly promenade, The Corso.
Over 100 students and teachers rowed from midday Saturday to midday Sunday, with Year 10 and 12 students doing the hard yards through the early hours of the morning.
The Community Turned out to Support the Boys and their Teachers
Passers-by stopped to cheer. Year 7”s hit The Corso with buckets collecting donations. Year 11’s ran the barbeque. Parents doing pick ups and drop offs sent plates of food.
The event was as much a powerful community-builder as a fundraising event, according to 16-year-old Year 10 students Harry and Harrison.
“We didn’t just get off the rower and wander off. We stayed together and cheered each other on and made sure everyone had someone supporting them.”
“I got to have good conversations with teachers and some of the other students about the row itself and what it was for. I definitely built a relationship with the teachers that stayed,” Harry said.
Harry, who rowed for two hours, filling slots between 10pm and 2am, said it brought all year groups together.
“A lot of the kids were coming in and supporting and bringing each other food, even people they didn’t know. Random kids walking past that didn’t know us would sit there for 10 minutes saying ‘let’s go boys’. It was awesome.
“I’m pretty proud of it, just to think we went out and raised that money and we’ve helped 500 kids do that workshop.”
Workshop’s Lasting Legacy
Harry and Harrison’s year group is the latest in a long line of Bally Boys to do the Gotcha4Life-funded Tomorrow Man workshop, an annual tradition that started in 2015 when the school became the first in Australia to introduce the program.
One of the students from that first workshop, Jack, now 23, still recalls it vividly.
“I remember leaving there and thinking it’s probably the most impactful thing I have ever been a part of,” Jack said. “The conversations the workshop got out of us as 15 and 16-year-old boys - we had never experienced anything like that before.”
“All these people who you thought you knew really well, were pouring their hearts out to each other. I was in awe of how brave they were, talking about what they had been going through.
“We were going to school with these people every single day and thought we knew them quite well and we really didn’t. By creating an environment where people felt safe, it’s amazing what can come out.
“It completely changed the way we spoke to each other. People were checking in with each other a lot more.”
Even now, the impact endures.
“I’m still close with people I went to school with. All of us feel comfortable to reach out to each other. I often wonder if we would be like that if we weren’t exposed to the workshop. It had a massive effect. It still impacts me seven years on.”
Current Bally Boys Harry and Harrison felt the impact immediately too.
“It really taught us how to communicate well about serious issues, and how to ask the right questions to look after our mates,” Harry said.
“We’d usually just talk about sport and that sort of thing. There had definitely been times when I know I wanted to speak, and I talked to some of my mates afterward and they’d also wanted to speak, but they just didn’t know how to. An hour after the workshop, my mates were coming up to me and talking to me about those other things.”
Harrison put new skills into action straight away too.
“It taught us how to communicate with each other. I used that afterward with one of my mates because I just wanted to talk to him about it. It was really good because now I know how to actually talk to people about serious stuff.”
BOYS ENGAGE - AND CHANGE
Student Support Officer Sara also saw the impact on the participants.
“Sitting in the workshop, it was very interesting to see how some went from not very engaged to hanging on every word. They created a fantastic, very safe environment where the boys felt they could open up. It’s good to be able to have those conversations and check in with others,” she said.
“I think the students learnt a lot about themselves, each other and they were challenged to challenge masculinity and those classic gender stereotypes and norms to support each other.”
“A lot of the Year 10s were so unbelievably helpful with the Row and rowed for so long - it was great for them to see where their efforts went.”
The boys valued the 24 Hour Row even more after seeing the effect of the funds they raised.
“Now that I’ve done the workshop, and I’ve realised how impactful it is, I’m just proud that other kids are going to be able to do that because of us. I’d do the Row again and again just to make sure more people can have access to that resource,” Harry said.
Harrison added, “It was really cool to see that our Rowing effort went to a really good cause. If schools have the opportunity to do it, they definitely should. It’s 24 hours. To raise what we did - $17,000 for 500 kids to do the workshop, that’s definitely worth going for.”
And worth rowing for.
