Maddie Wilson does the beach sprint in Waikanae club swimwear. Picture courtesy of Surf Life Saving New Zealand
THE first time Maddie Wilson threw a javelin, she set a Gisborne Athletic Club record at the weekly club night at Awapuni Stadium.
She knew she could jump high and run fast, but the javelin record took her by surprise.
Since then, she has concluded her best athletic opportunities might lie in a run-jump-throw package.
High jump has long been Maddie’s standout discipline.
She won the junior girls’ high jump at the New Zealand Secondary Schools Athletic Championships in Hastings in December when she was 15 (she’s now 16).
She jumped 1.70 metres, five centimetres higher than her previous best achieved a year and a half earlier.
What made her achievement all the more remarkable was that it came with virtually no training in the months before.
“Basically, I hadn’t had the opportunity to train,” she said.
“I’d been injured. I hurt my lower back playing football. It had been a bit sore, then I twisted as I took a shot and felt it go.”
She tested it on a visit to Christchurch, in a training session with Athletics New Zealand combined-events coach Terry Lomax, who gives advice on her training regimen.
“It was really sore for a long time after that, and even a week before the secondary schools champs I was thinking of pulling out,” Maddie said.
Timely recovery from back injuryBut after a lot of stretching and icing in the week leading up to the champs, her back felt a lot better.
Maddie would have faced difficulties in her preparation even if she had been fully fit. Gisborne has grass tracks but no all-weather tracks of the type used for national athletic championships.
“These are two very different surfaces, with different speeds,” Maddie said.
“For high jump, and even long jump, in the heptathlon, this is quite an issue because it means your run-up will be different, so you have to change your run-up on the day.”
As well as her high-jump success at the secondary schools champs, a result she had achieved in the same competition the year before, she was fifth in the junior girls’ 200m.
Maddie followed this up with a fifth placing in an open women’s high jump field at the Porritt Classic at Hamilton’s Porritt Stadium in February. She cleared 1.65m — her personal best before her winning effort at the secondary schools champs — and was happy with this as she was competing against New Zealand’s best senior high jumpers.
Later that month she competed in the under-16 girls’ division of the New Zealand Combined Events Championships in Whanganui.
Female athletes generally do the heptathlon — seven disciplines, with points awarded in each. The u16 girls did a hexathlon — six disciplines.
Maddie won the hexathlon amassing 300 points more than the runner-upMaddie won it, amassing 300 points more than the runner-up. She was first in the high jump, javelin and 600m, second in the 80m hurdles and 200m, and third in the shot put.
Also in February, Maddie was one of 10 athletes inducted into the Tairawhiti Rising Legends talent development programme for 2018. Run by Sport Gisborne Tairawhiti, this programme provides selected athletes from 14 to 17 years of age with a $1000 scholarship and a year of mentoring and development opportunities.
In early March, Maddie was back at Porritt Stadium in Hamilton for the New Zealand Track and Field Championships.
Still 15 and competing in the under-18 women’s high jump, she finished third with a cleared height of 1.66m.
She made the semifinals of the 200m but didn’t line up because she wanted to get back to Gisborne to prepare for the national surf lifesaving championships the following weekend. In fact, her high-jump practice had taken a back seat as she trained for the surf lifesaving event.
At the surf lifesaving champs, Maddie competed for the Waikanae club in the u16 division. In combination with others, she won gold in the tube rescue and beach relay, and silver in the board relay, the u19 sprint relay and the open sprint relay.
As an individual, she won bronze in the u16 beach sprint and was fourth in the open two-kilometre beach run and fifth in the u16 board race.
Maddie has played football since she was in Year 6, and plays striker for Gisborne Girls’ High School. Last year, as a Year 11 student, she also played Gisborne premier grade netball for the school but decided to give that a miss this year . . . Year 12 would be an important scholastic year.
Maddie is also involved in a Young Enterprise Scheme team GrowHydroNevertheless, she has found time to fill the chief executive role in a combined Gisborne Girls’ and Boys’ High team, GrowHydro, for the Young Enterprise Scheme.
The team produced a prototype of a garden wall that grows plants hydroponically, and progress is ongoing.
With all this going on, what are Maddie’s plans?
“My coach in Christchurch, Terry Lomax, said I should keep my options open until I finish school, so next year (Y13) will probably be the same . . . I’ll use all this training to try to keep fit, and during summer do a bit of both (athletics and surf lifesaving).”
The Summer Youth Olympics comes up every four years. This year it is in Argentina in October. Ideally, Maddie would set herself for the next edition, but by then — 2022 — she will be turning 20 and above the maximum age (18 years old on December 31 in the year of the Games).
The IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations) World Under-20 Championships, held this month in Finland, take place every two years. Maddie would be turning 18 in the year of the 2020 championships. The heptathlon is among the athletic events contested at these championships.
“I think combined events is probably my best option — a bit of running, a bit of jumping and a bit of throwing,” Maddie said.
And outside the world of sport?
'I want to go to Otago to do health science or medicine'“I want to go to Otago to do health science or medicine.”
Maddie came to the attention of Athletics New Zealand coach Lomax when, while a Year 10 student at St Margaret’s College in Christchurch, she was part of his athletic club’s cadet development squad.
Lomax is sure she could excel in a range of sports, but says it is important she loves doing whatever sport she decides to pursue.
“I told her she should keep up her other sports while in school and as she gets closer to the end of her schooling start to narrow down the options based on what she wants, not what others may want,” he said.
“If she chose athletics, I would assist her where I could.”
In relation to her busy schedule, he said she should “moderate” what she did so she didn’t overdo things.
“Maddie is obviously physically talented but she has a great attitude as well, and understands top-level sport is a journey that takes time,” Lomax said.
“Being the best now is not the important thing, but loving what you are doing and making the most of what you have in what you do is paramount.
“Her family support (from parents Graham and Amanda) is brilliant and they have a great sense of proportion and perspective, which is great to see.”