Senior tennis team off to Loreto Ballarat, 1963
Left to right
Inside the bus: Bernadette Conquest, Barbara Nolan, Mother John Berchmans Anderson, Christine Zaetta, Barbara Hill, Andrea Leahy, Aileen Hughes, Diana Gillon, Ann Filcock, Peta O’Shaughnessy, Mary Connellan, Annette Rice, Angela Lee and Deirdre McSwiney;
Outside, standing: Mother Emilian Brooke-Cowden, Margaret Mary Parker, Mother Josephine Collins, Geraldine O’Collins, Sara Barrett, Laurette Lynch, Elizabeth Daily, Patricia Galbally, Cynthia Arnold, Jennifer McCauley, Eleanor Hirsch and Mrs Patricia Schaefer;
Seated: Catherine Curtis, Karen Johnson, Gerardine Archbold, Mary Therese Quigg, Pamela Fetherstonhaugh, Mary Elizabeth Coleman, Barbara Anderson and Patricia Dowling;
Kneeling: Catherine Toner, Kerry Hamilton-Smith and Helen Vaughan
From 1955 until 1980 the sports program, from Preparatory to Year Twelve, was run by the Sports Mistress, Mrs Patricia Schaefer. She insisted on punctuality, correct uniform, good grooming, clean shoes and the right equipment. Patricia presented sport as a means of enhancing self-respect and learning new skills and how to react under pressure and to unpredictable events.
In 1970 Patricia wrote about the importance of physical education: A person in good physical condition is capable of striking a balance between mental and physical health, and with the strain of secondary study it is vital to also teach the student to relax.
She was a serene and dignified lady whose presence alone was sufficient to calm nerves and ensure true esprit de corps. Sister Ruth Winship recalled Patricia’s dedication: When the day’s work is done and the busy feet have gone home, a solitary figure begins her nightly pilgrimage from one end of the grounds to the other – the forgotten jumper is put carefully away, the stray bat or ball retrieved and the last crumpled paper plucked from the lawn.
In 1985 when a new indoor sports facility and gymnasium was built it was named the Patricia Schaefer Physical Education Centre. The students irreverently referred to it as ‘Pat’s new shed’. For, during Patricia’s regime, the sports equipment had variously been stored in a tin shed at the back gate, the stables, a room in the groundsman’s house, a box in the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes and in the basement of Mandeville Hall.