Napier girls take road race honours

The Champion Napier girls 3000 metres team (from left) Emmison Gear, Ellie Meynell, Georgia Jones and Olivia Molloy. Photo / Supplied.

Napier Girls' High School teacher, athletics coach and mentor Sheila Smidt is starting to wonder if she'll ever be able to take a break after the school's latest triumph at the New Zealand Secondary Schools track and field championships.

Her team of Georgia Jones (6th), Olivia Molloy (24th), Emmison Gear (33rd) and Elley Meynell (36th) won the girls' 3000 metre road race teams title, based on best-three placings.

"I've been at it 40 years," said Smidt, after coming home from the December 11-13 48th schools championships with the only win for any of the Hawke's Bay schools.

But she says she'll be there at least another two years. "There's a good group of young girls coming through," she said.

Napier Boys' High School was prominent in the relays with a particularly good second-placing to a highly rated King's College (Auckland) team in the senior boys' 4x400m event, running 3m 26.79s, to be beaten by 2.7s.

The school was also placed third in the junior boys' 4x100m relay, and other Hawke's Bay schools placing were NGHS runner Brianna Lee's third placing in the junior girls' 800m, with a time of 2m 16.09s, Lindisfarne College's Callum O'Keefe's third in the junior boys' 800m, just 0.06s from breaking two minutes, and NGHS field eventer Leala Willman's third in the junior girls' javelin with a personal best of 32.79m.

Meanwhile, former Napier BHS running star and national secondary schools 1500m champion Eric Speakman, of Napier Harrier Club, broke a long-standing Hawke's Bay-Gisborne Athletics Centre 5000m record when he won in stunning style in Auckland on Friday night.

Well on the bounce-back from a troubled 2019, in which he had to deal with three fractures, Speakman's 13m 31.84s time took 12 seconds off a centre record of 13m 43.1s set more than 30 years ago by Olympic and Commonwealth Games marathon runner Rex Wilson. Speakman also shattered the Daikin Night of 5 meeting record for the distance.