We all hope the country is back at level 1 to allow the event, which is being combined with the postponed Athletics New Zealand Under 18 Championships, a victim of the brief change to alert levels in late February and early March.
Also discussed was the intention that the paper team announced at the end of the New Zealand Schools Championships will this year have the chance to compete as a New Zealand Schools representative team at the Potts, Cooks and Capital Classics at the end of January and the start of February.
A full announcement is due within the next fortnight. With international travel all but impossible for our athletes (the last time school athletes left our shores was the cross-country team in August 2019), this could be an exciting opportunity for our leading school-age athletes and at the same time an opportunity for the Classic meetings to include competition opportunities for our leading school-age athletes.
There are changes to the calendar brought about by the later date of the New Zealand Secondary Schools in December, a consequence of the later start of NCEA exams, which now do not end until Tuesday, December 14.
Also in the mix was the postponement of the Athletics New Zealand Road Championships and AGM from early September until the weekend of November 6-7 in Cambridge.
In light of the later New Zealand Schools Championships, the Regional League programme has been rescheduled.
The Regional League is a valuable and well-supported club competition that also provides excellent and essential preparation and competition for school-age athletes who are competing at the Schools Championships in December.
The opening competition is unchanged and will be in Inglewood on Saturday, October 30.
The first meeting has traditionally alternated between Hastings and Inglewood. This very early first meeting has usually been the poorest in terms of athlete support. As the New Zealand Schools are due at the same venue it will hopefully this year be viewed as valuable for athletes to compete early in the season at the venue for December's Championships.
We avoided moving the first Regional meeting to the first weekend in November to avoid a clash with the AGM and the Road Race in Cambridge.
The second meeting will now be in Palmerston North on Saturday, November 20. We have traditionally held the middle meeting in the series at either Whanganui, or Palmerston North, which means the least travel for teams and has proved popular for athletes facing NCEA exams.
The third and final meeting will be in Masterton on Saturday, December 4, which prior to the change in NCEA was the date of the New Zealand Secondary Schools Championships.
Our Whanganui club nights start on Tuesday, October 19. There will be some ground sharing with the Heartland rugby team in the early weeks that has worked well in the past.
The programmes follow the traditional categories with the A programme generally featuring 100m, 400m and 1500m, long jump and shot; and the B programme 200m, 800m short hurdles, high jump and discus.
The C programme features the popular 2000m Road Race that starts and finishes on the track after completing the Royal Opera House block, and odd distances on the track (60m, 150m, 300m and 600m) with a jump and throw included.
We open the season with a C programme (Tuesday, October 19) and return to it on the Tuesdays prior to the Palmerston North and Masterton Regional Meetings. A timed programme will appear each week on our website with results appearing each Thursday.
Additions can be made to a programme providing there is an eight-day warning, allowing it to be published a week early on the weekly programme.
As mentioned last week, leading hurdler Maggie Jones will be leading the Children's programme, which will commence on Monday, November 1, and again full details will appear on the website.
