Athletics: Tauranga schoolgirls future distance stars

Madison Rennie shows the strain at the end of the junior girls' road race. Photo / Supplied

Tauranga's burgeoning athletics profile was enhanced at the New Zealand Secondary School Track, Field and Road Race Championships in Wanganui last week.

Sprinting is well renowned here with New Zealand's two fastest men, Joseph Millar and Kodi Harman from Papamoa, and Tauranga Boys' senior 4x100m relay team did well to win a bronze medal.

But it was the female distance runners who were the stars in Wanganui, dominating the 4km road races.

Bethlehem College won the junior girls' three and six-runner events, and at senior level won silver in the six-runner event and bronze in the three-runner race. Tauranga Girls' College took third place in the junior event.

Tauranga-based coach Kerry Hill, who mentors sprint twins Millar and Harman, was particularly pleased with three of his students.

Deborah Paine, 17, from Otumoetai College, in her first national schools 4km road race, cleaned up a quality field in Wanganui to win the title by 200 metres. Madison Rennie, 15, from Bethlehem College, won bronze in the junior girls' race, and Anneke Grogan, 17, ex-Aquinas College now boarding at Sacred Heart, New Plymouth, won the 2km steeplechase title.

"Deb is such a newcomer from rugby sevens that she will have shocked the New Zealand distance fraternity with her senior road race gold medal," said Hill. "Madison also medalled in the junior road event. As a former swimmer, like pole vaulter Hannah Philpot [Tauranga Girls'] who scored a personal best in her second ever competition, these three are an interesting example of the code-swap reverse of what usually happens to the sport of athletics.

"Deb and Madi are both good prospects and have families with strong faiths and I think that helps them.

"They are willing to work and do it consistently, and with good facilities and coaching make the complete package really.

"It is early days with our top girls but as long as we keep them injury-free in the longer term they will become good seniors.

"Deb, Madi and Anneke have the personality and the support to go further."

Hill says the programmes run at major Western Bay schools are paying dividends.

"At Bethlehem College Charlotte Bartrum is keeping the kids enthused all the time, Michelle Pollard at Tauranga Girls' and Gareth Hyatt at Tauranga Boys', who was a very good runner himself, have a bunch of top juniors coming though. It is exciting actually."