Orange High School has already secured cup glory for the first time since 2016 after defeating both Bathurst and Dubbo in the first two ties of this year's competition.

Dubbo will hit the road on Wednesday for day one of its tie on Wednesday while day two will be held on Friday, July 29 due to teachers from NSW public and Catholic schools striking later this week.

While the competition will be slightly disjointed, Dubbo College sports captain Hamish Wood said there's still plenty to play for.

"We can't win the cup but we can finish with more points than Orange if we get enough against Bathurst," Wood said.

"We won the more sports against Orange but we didn't win big enough when we did so there's a lot of motivation.

"If we can't win the cup, we could still get the most points."

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Dubbo won five of the eight sports played against Orange last week but heavy defeats in the hockey and netball and a draw in the tennis gave Orange the all-important advantage.

"The sports we lost, we lost big, and the sports we won we just didn't win by enough," Wood added.

"It hurts a lot more when you've won most sports than you've lost and we just couldn't away with the cup."

Bathurst has the same goal as Dubbo heading into the final tie of this year's competition after a narrow loss to Orange High two weeks ago.

Orange finished with an overall total of 822.5 points after a 407-393 win over Bathurst and a 412.5-387.5 defeat of Dubbo.

As painful as the tight loss last week was, there was still plenty of positives for Dubbo College.

Impressive wins in both the boys' and girls' soccer was a real highlight while there was a number of standout individual efforts in the athletics and the rugby league side showed great determination to come back from 20-10 down and win 26-20 in the final moments.

The school spirit on show and support from students and teachers alike during day two when the hosts needed to make-up plenty of ground also showcased all that is good about the Astley Cup.

"It's awesome. It's the best time of the year," year 12 student Wood said of the competition.

"I look forward to it so much and it's one of the things I'm going to miss most when I leave school.

"You get people who couldn't care less about sport day-to-day and then you see them screaming their lungs out and they've lost their voice at the end of the day because there's such an atmosphere.

"There's nothing like it."

On Wednesday, Dubbo and Bathurst will do battle in the tennis, hockey and two soccer matches while the Mulvey Cup debating will also be contested.

Athletes in the basketball, netball, athletics and rugby league will have to wait until next month to do battle.

"The first day against Bathurst has their stronger sports so we've got to make sure we're nice and close to them then because we do think we can win that second day," Wood said.

Wood added he was thankful to organisers, particularly Dubbo College Astley Cup coordinator Craig May, for ensuring the competition could be completed this year despite the challenges of this week's strike.

Wednesday, June 29

9.15am: Tennis

10.30am: Mulvey cup debating

11.45am: Hockey

1.15pm: Boys' soccer

2.30pm: Girls' soccer

Friday, July 29

9.15am: Basketball

10.45am: Netball

12.15pm: Athletics

2pm: Rugby league