Athletics: Napier runner Paige Dobson wins national schools 1500m title

Napier Girls' High School runner Paige Dobson (No 439) in the Junior Girls 1500 metres final she won at the 2024 New Zealand Secondary Schools athletics championships in Timaru.

Young Napier runner and new national secondary schools Junior Girls 1500 metres champion Paige Dobson takes another big step in a fledgling career when she tackles an Open women’s elite 800m field at the North of Fives in Auckland on Saturday.

Napier Girls' High School runner Paige Dobson (No 439) in the Junior Girls 1500 metres final she won at the 2024 New Zealand Secondary Schools athletics championships in Timaru.

Second-year Napier Girls’ High School student Dobson, who turned 15 in August, won her title in Timaru on December 7, running a personal best 4m 39.67s and pipping runner-up Madison Wos, of Lower Hutt college Sacred Heart, by just 0.91 seconds.

Dobson was also second in the 800m, for a second year in a row, bowing by just 0.5 seconds to Abby O’Boyle, of Verdon College, Invercargill, who ran 2m 12.31s,

Hers was the only mainstream event gold medal for Hawke’s Bay athletes at the three-day championships, while Senior para-athlete Luis Douglas, of Havelock North HS, had wins in the 1500m and the CC Multi Class 2000m road run, and second placing and top T20 athlete in the 800m.

Fellow NGHS pupil Zita Meo had to settle for second to Mt Aspiring College’s Phoebe Laker in the Junior girls 400m, after winning the event last year.

Havelock North HS claimed the remainder of Hawke’s Bay’s collection with Alex West second to St Patrick’s Kilbirnie runner Jaguun Gunregiav-Willers in the Senior boys 2000m steeplechase, and the Senior Girls sprint squad of Amy Nicoll, Millie Woodham, Hunter Avery, Amponsaa Tabi-Amponsah, and Maisie Simpson claiming a silver medal in the Senior girls 4x100m relay, just missing out on a double after the school claimed the Junior girls title last year.

Dobson has run against adult class before, with success, having won the women’s 10km event at the Hawke’s Bay marathon in May, in what has been a big year, starting with wins in both the 14 years girls 800m and 1500m in her last North Island children’s Colgate Games in January.

Thus she won’t be running at the 2025 games, in Hastings, on January 10-12, but she didn’t miss a beat after the Timaru win, being back with coach Tony Snell at the Hastings Athletics Club’s weekly club night last Tuesday starting the preparation for this weekend, her next assignments.

She broke five Hawke’s Bay Poverty Bay Athletics Centre records, on the track, the road and at cross-country, most notably with personal best of 2m 12.79s for the 800m last month in Auckland (lowered by five seconds from the PB she ran at the Colgate Games), and the 1500m last weekend, lowering her PB at the distance by close to seven seconds this year.

She also ran 10m 26.39s in the 3000m at the North Island schools championships in April, and dominated the road and cross-country in the winter, although the winter ills wrecked her chances at the national championships.

Now she starts the step-up with the Night of Fives in Auckland, a busy week in the Athletics New Zealand Summer Circuit starting late in January, the national championships in Dunedin on March 6-9, and ultimately the Senior Girls titles at the 2025 national secondary schools championships in Hastings next December.

In the summer circuit she plans to run the mile at the Cook’s Classic in Whanganui on January 25, the 1500m four days later at the Capital Classic in Wellington, and the 800m at the Potts Classic in Hastings on February 1.

Coach Snell predicts that, past the growth spurt common to her age group, she will develop over longer distances, because she “just loves to run”.

There’s running in the family, including developing Netherlands running sensation Niels Laros, in the bloodlines on her mum’s “Laros side”. Aged just 19, he was sixth in the Paris Olympics’ men’s 1500m final, setting a Netherlands record of 3m 29.54s. He’s also the European Under 20 1500m and 5000m champion.

But her favourite favourite is an English runner who won the women’s 800m at the Olympics, Dobson saying: “My role model is Keely Hodgkinson from the UK - she’s such a talented and inspiring athlete.”

Doug Laing is a senior reporter based in Napier with Hawke’s Bay Today, and has 51 years of journalism experience, 41 of them in Hawke’s Bay, in news gathering, including breaking news, sports, local events, issues, and personalities.