CACTUS students pass Longest Day with flying colours

The Longest Day was a hard slog for the 15 high school students involved in the finale of the CACTUS programme run by NZ Police and Lytton High. They covered 26 kilometres during the day and finished it off with a 500-metre fire engine pull down Gladstone Road.Picture by Paul Rickard

The 15 high school students involved in the latest CACTUS youth development programme in the city came through The Longest Day in fine style on Saturday.

The students were mainly from Lytton High School, with a couple from other kura.

The Longest Day encompassed six-and-a-half hours of running, log-carrying, a mud run and other tests, and culminated in a 500-metre fire engine pull along Gladstone Road.

They hauled the engine from the Town Clock to the Salvation Army Citadel.

The day finished off an eight-week-long course during which the students trained three days a week from 5.30am to 7.30am.

They were under the tutelage of lead instructor Kayla Tane, who went through the CACTUS (Combined Adolescent Challenge Training Unit & Support) programme in 2012 before a seven-year career in the New Zealand Navy. She is now a fisheries officer.

The group of instructors included Sergeant Willis Tamatea and constables Rangi Kingi, Mark Atkins and Geoff Pardoe from the New Zealand Police, and Kelly Humphries from Fire and Emergency New Zealand.

“In all, the students covered 26 kilometres during The Longest Day of running and exercises,” Lytton’s CACTUS coordinator Tania Bartlet said.

“We started the programme with 20 students and by The Longest Day, 15 remained.

They all completed the final day.

“It was a very successful course and the students got a lot out of it,’ she said. “They should be very proud of themselves.

“We will be running another CACTUS programme in 2024.”

CACTUS is run in partnership with NZ Police, FENZ Gisborne and Lytton High School .

The JN Williams Trust has supported the programme over the past 12 years.