Kaitaia College's EJ Nathan's discus throw at the Northland Secondary Schools Athletic Championships has marked him as a young man with a potentially big future in athletics.
Competing in the intermediate grade at Wednesday's championships at Pompallier College, Nathan sent the discus out to 50.3m, just short of Patrick Hellier's record
of 51.28m more than 20 years ago.
Hellier, who is married to Kirsten Hellier, Valerie Vili's coach, broke a raft of Northland's throwing records while he lived in Whangarei. He went on to win more than 13 New Zealand titles for shot put, hammer throw and discus between 1991 and 2009, with the latest being gold in the shot put last year.
Nathan was pleased with his form: "I felt pretty good when I realised I was close to the record." But unlike many top athletes, he doesn't have a coach and works on weights without expert guidance, "just practising my techniques".
Kamo High School's Ryan Slater showed the benefit of working with a coach when he held his form to take gold in the senior 800m, ahead of Romahn Howard (Rodney College) in 2:06.96 and Hamish Younger (Dargaville High), who ran strongly to take bronze in 2:13.92.
Ethan Carter from Kamo High also showed the benefit of expert coaching, when with 300m to go in the intermediate 1500m, he was trailing Casey Clarkson (Whangarei Boys' High) by four metres. Encouragement from his strategically-placed coach at the beginning of the back straight spurred Carter on to catch Clarkson and grab gold by 0.84sec.
Melissa Simpson, Kerikeri High's well-performed middle distance runner, took gold for the intermediate 800m and 1500m double, but in much slower times than might have been expected. However, she ran to plan.
"I knew the races weren't trials, so I just went for technique and tried to relax - I just wanted to relax and have a fun day and enjoy it," she said. Simpson wants to be ready for this weekend's Northland championships, followed by the North Island Secondary School championships in Wellington, next weekend.
With no hurdles in the inter-school programme, Dargaville High's Hayley Cilchrist, a hurdles specialist, still showed her speed, winning gold in the senior girls' 100m, 200m and 400m.
During the day spectators saw over 400 school pupils competing in Northland's largest annual athletic meeting, competing under Athletic New Zealand rules.
