Fafeita to tilt at Youth Games

Wairarapa will be represented in both the competition and managerial ranks at the Commonwealth Youth Games to be held on the Isle of Man from September 7 to 13.
Australian and New Zealand age group hammer throw champion Alex Fafeita will don the New Zealand colours in both the hammer throw and shot put while noted field events coach John Quinn has been named as "team support" for the manager of the Kiwi contingent, Southland's Lance Smith.
Confirmation of their selection comes just one day after Fafeita and Quinn were listed among the finalists for the 2010-11 Wairarapa sports awards. Fafeita in the youth category, which he won last year, and Quinn in the administrative category.
Several Wairarapa athletes are understood to have been in the reckoning for the Youth Games line-up but, in the end, only Fafeita got the nod. In fact, of the 17-strong squad just two are from the Wellington region.
Competitors at the Youth Games are only able to compete in two events and, while hammer throw was always going to be the number one for Fafeita, it is interesting that while he prefers discus to shot put, the selectors have gone the other way. They could have been persuaded by results at the Australian track and field champs in Sydney in March when Fafeita, who was part of the Oceania team, picked up a gold in the under-18 hammer throw and silver in the shot put. He was a close fourth in the discus.
Just a few weeks later at the New Zealand track and field champs Fafeita won the 16 yrs hammer throw, was second in the 16 yrs shot put and discus and runner-up in the 19 yrs hammer throw.
Back in December, Fafeita won the senior boys hammer throw title at the New Zealand secondary school champs in Hastings with a performance which saw him named among the top athletes of the meet in a "paper" team, and also earned him a travel scholarship.
Locally, he broke the senior boys' records for discus and shot put at the Wairarapa secondary schools champs and, remarkably, now holds all the group records in those two events for that meet, some of which had stood for over 30 years.
Quinn has had outstanding success as a fields event coach with several of his prodigies having won or been minor placed at national championship level.
He was part of the field events coaching team for the New Zealand squad at the 2010 Ocean junior track and field champs, attended the Australian coaching congress in 2007 and 2009 and has coached at Young Olympian camps.
Quinn has also been involved with a squad of promising athletes who are being groomed for the 2016 Olympics in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, while he has combined management and coaching roles with Wellington provincial age group sides.