Northland's young athletes celebrated Anniversary Weekend with top performances at a North Island age-group interprovincial meeting in Inglewood. In a brilliant display of tactical running, Melissa Simpson overcame challenges from Waikato-Bay of Plenty's Tegan Voykovich and Auckland's Sally Wilkins to take out the girls 14-years 1500m in 4min 56sec. Simpson led outwith Voykovich vying for the lead. "Then it came to the last lap and I just decided to go for it, and I went," Simpson said. Sixteen year-old Ryan Slater's time of 2m 06.53s in the 800m was another stand-out performance at the meeting. He came home strongly for third in a field that included a number of 17-year-olds, cutting a massive eight seconds off his personal best time. Slater was justifiably pleased, but modest in his comments. "I felt quite good in the end knowing that I'd done a really good time, it was a personal best by quite a lot," he said. The in-form Slater ran in the 800m little more than two hours after running a personal best of 56.01s for the 400m. He attributed his improvement to working-out under coach Ian Babe. Fifteen year-old Paul Cater also ran an impressive 800m to finish second in his grade, in a personal best time of 2m12s. Other Northlanders to record personal best times at Inglewood were Joshua Brown, David Nair, Hayley Gilchrist, Hannah Pattinson and Travis Connelly. Tyler Edwards and Alice Brooking also performed well. Team manager, Catherine Ryan, believes Inglewood's all-weather track helped to boost performances. "They [the young athletes] definitely noticed the difference an all weather track makes to their times and they can't wait for Northland to finally have their own," she said. "They were an absolute delight to take away, Northland will be proud," Ryan added.
