At the weekly children’s section of the club on Monday, a large, vibrant group enjoyed the varied athletic-based activities. The keen children get a second chance for additional activities and coaching at 5pm on Thursdays.
Tuesday night was the regular Club Night and, as reported in this column, there has been considerable growth in numbers enjoying our newly-resurfaced facility. Even this week on the eve of the Whanganui High School championships, when many rested for the following day, there were more than 100 recorded performances.
As I have said many times in this column, track and field is a labour-intensive sport providing logistical challenges.
It is multi-disciplined with its throwing, jumping, sprinting, middle-distance running and hurdling. The nature of the competition provides challenges for officials and helpers.
A school rugby match can be controlled by a referee and a couple of touch judges (often the latter is covered by players and coaches) but just one athletic discipline needs its own officials.
School track and field championship challenges are varied. It is not easy to balance athletic excellence with wide participation and, as a championship takes hours to complete, provides an additional challenge for school organisers.
This has been met in a variety of ways including house points competitions and novelty and different events alongside the traditional events.
Whanganui Collegiate developed an inter-house competition to maximise participation. As a school with a smallish roll, this is possible and easier to manage, especially with the effective house system.
Athletes are only allowed to do two individual events and two relays or team events (steeplechase and 3000m).
There was a real buzz about Cooks Gardens for this year’s annual Collegiate inter-house athletics match.
Beautiful weather with only a light breeze, a large enthusiastic crowd and supportive house spirit combined to produce an exciting evening of track and field athletics.
There were numerous personal bests and some new entries to the Athletics Whanganui rankings.
Selwyn retained the Inter House Shield from Grey after an evening which saw many changes to the leaderboard (Selwyn 813, Grey 786, Hadfield 712, Harvey 652).
The inter-house match is about “team” and the event restrictions on athletes ensure there is high participation. The 16 x 200m relay alone had 128 athletes (just under 30% of the school).
The rules concerning the number of individual events an athlete can compete in mean individual honours are shared with almost 50 different event winners.
In the busy nature of the four-hour programme, even an athletics enthusiast like me can only get a brief snapshot of the many outstanding individual performances and close team races.
Hannah Byam had an outstanding afternoon and set Whanganui Collegiate history, becoming the first female to win a mixed team race.
Her win in the 2000m steeplechase team race was a personal best and bettered her New Zealand Schools junior silver medal performance.
She ran a personal best in winning her 300m and lost out to training partner Tilly Darke in the 1500m (both were given the same time). Sophie Bagrie impressed in third place. Earlier Tilly lost out to older sister Greta in the 800m by 0.1s.
Year 9 Phoebe Corin won the open discus and showed outstanding potential. Angus Allpress took the senior 100/200 double while Oliver Toohey impressed in 400m and javelin. The in-form Juliet McKinlay won her two events - long jump and 200m, the latter with a personal best time albeit hand-timed through the photo camera.
The nature of the team competition presents problems in terms of team selection for the Whanganui Secondary Schools Championships but is a small price to pay for the wide participation evident on Saturday.
Next week I will preview the Jennian Homes Athletics New Zealand Track and Field Championships to be held in Dunedin on March 6-9.
