At close of entries we have 24 schools entering just over 100 teams. This represents a slight drop from the 29 schools and 146 teams last year. The main area where there has been a decrease has been at Intermediate School level where the growth of The AIMS Games in Tauranga has produced a clash of events for athletes in that age group.
We are looking closely at a possible move to May next year to avoid this clash. A relay in May would also help secondary schools preparing for the New Zealand Secondary Schools in June and with the addition of Regional Relays to the June event could also prove popular.
It would also mean that Round the lake Relay would not follow the week after Secondary School Tournament week that could lead to an increase of Secondary Schools entries.
The size of the secondary schools entry has been retained with good entries from Taranaki, Hawkes Bay, Manawatu and Wellington. Again only four of the Wanganui Regions schools are competing with numbers reduced because of clashes with internal Trial Exams.
Regular winners Wellington College return with strong numbers (8 teams) and will again be challenged by fellow Wellington Region schools St Patrick's College Silverstream and Scots College and a Taranaki challenge from New Plymouth Boys High School who have 12 teams entered in the three boy's grades (the largest school entry).
Host school Wanganui Collegiate won the senior girls last year but will face a stern challenge from Wellington Girls College and Wellington East from the south, Napier Girls from the east and New Plymouth Girls High School and Sacred Heart New Plymouth from the west.
Collegiate have a stronger chance in the Junior Grade when they are fielding a strong combination headed by Caitlyn Alabaster and three team mates who were part of the winning three and six to score teams at the New Zealand Schools in June.
The great popularity of the event has almost certainly been because it is a relay. However, there is strong individual competition in the first lap of both the senior boys and girls races where leading runners strive for the fastest first lap performance.
Again two handsome prizes have been sponsored by Bates Watchmaker who have supported the event right from the start in 1978.
In the girls race Hannah O'Connor (sacred Heart New Plymouth) will seek to repeat her win last year and will also look to beat the course record set by Holly van Dalen in 2006 (she was only two seconds shy of it last year), O'Connor will face a stern challenge from Tessa Webb (Feilding HS) who was the NZ Schools senior champion in June.
In the boys race Angus White (New Plymouth Boys High School) and Christian Conder (Wanganui Collegiate School) will start as favourites. White finished ahead of Conder at the New Zealand Schools and Australian Schools with Conder heading White at the Athletics New Zealand Championships in Auckland at the beginning of August. They could threaten the record set by Matt Baxter (New Plymouth Boys High School).
The first race (the Intermediate Schools and Year 9 race for girls) starts at 1-040 pm with the fourth and last race (Senior and Junior A boys race) at 3 -55 pm.