Otago student Josh Chisholm is a champion shot putter and a promising teacher in training.
Otago tauira Josh Chisholm (Kāi Tahu) has placed fourth in para shot put at the 2024 Oceania Athletics Area Championships, recently held in Suva, Fiji.
This was Josh’s first big international competition, and he says it was an amazing experience.
“The flag ceremony was really cool, representing the New Zealand flag was an experience – my first time wearing the Silver Fern, and to think five years ago I never thought it would be possible to represent my country at a higher level than just participation.”
Paralympic athletes compete in a range of categories; Josh has a type of dwarfism and competes in the short stature category. It’s a complex points system but essentially, while the athletes all compete alongside each other in the field, they are rated against the record set for their own category.
“There is great camaraderie, it’s all about personal bests,” says Josh, who set the shot put record during qualifying rounds and couldn’t better it in Suva.
Josh took up shot put four years ago. He was with a friend at an athletics park when Raylene Bates approached him, asked if he had ever thrown shot put and invited him to a training session. Raylene is now his coach and Chef de Mission for the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games.
Josh is also in the second year of a three-year degree to become a primary school teacher.
"Whatever you study, you have to have your heart in it.”
It was experience as a youth worker that led him to teaching.
"Not only was I working in schools but also witnessing some pretty bad behaviour on the legal side – juvenile detention and all of that stuff – and realising that I couldn’t put all my efforts into the after, but into the prevention.”
Josh grew up in Mosgiel, Dunedin, and attended St Peter Chanel School and Trinity Catholic College.
“In my life, besides my mum and dad, the people who have influenced me have been really good teachers. I’ve realised that having the representation of people who look like me in the classroom is important, and I also realise that children are going through a lot as well. I like to listen to people, and I am wondering if I can be that positive influence on them.”
Josh has enjoyed his studies, finding the teaching students form close relationships in this degree because they go through as a cohort taking the same classes, but are not competing against each other.
Josh is also a residential advisor in Otago’s University College, a role that comes with a self-contained unit in the residential college on the Dunedin campus. He loves living on the beautiful campus and appreciates the proximity to his classes, town, and training venues.
Over this winter, he is training four times a week over winter with fitness in between.
“I’ve been lucky to use the high-performance gym that the Highlanders use. I like to give them a rark up.”
While he was competing to qualify for Oceania, Josh was featured in an episode of TVNZ’s Attitude.
“It was a crazy experience filming around campus for four days,” says Josh.