Thirty of Northland's best young athletes gathered in Kerikeri last month to take part in the the Kerikeri Striders Junior Athletics Club ribbon day.
A spokesman for the organising club, Harko Brown, noted strong promotion through local media in the weeks leading up to the event on Saturday, March 29, was rewarded with an "excellent turnout". He went on to note there was a "great effort all round" from the kids who took part while representing teams from Kaitaia, Whangarei and their peers from the hosting Kerikeri unit.
Held in "perfect summer's day" conditions at Kerikeri High School, the ribbon day was used to give those juniors competing for Northland in the inter-provincial series a big hit-out before their competition at Hamilton over the Easter holiday period.
Two Northland records were broken during the day, both by 11-year-old athletes. Kaitaia's Mateja Matijevich-Wiki carried on her recent good form, annihilating her own Northland record - set in Wellington in January during the Colgate Games - by throwing a massive 10.67m to better her old mark by nearly a metre. Up-and-coming Kerikeri high jumper Billie Brown also smashed her own personal best, also set at the Colgate Games this year, while beating one of M Neely's longstanding 1989 records of 1.40m with a new height of 1.43m.
Brown noted the efforts of both girls were the best recorded in national competition this year. Other outstanding performances on the day were recorded by James McDonald (aged 7, Whangarei), and Kerikeri sprinters, Sophia Niadzair-Holster (8) and Juliette Wilkinson (9), who all ran fast times.
