Athletics
Four Wairarapa athletes will be part of the New Zealand team contesting the Oceania track and field championships at Papeete, Tahiti, from June 3-5.
Sian Chapman, Emma Kruszona, Katie Smith and Simone Small will contest a series of events against opposition from Australia, Papua New Guinea, New Caledonia, French Polynesia, Samoa, Fiji, Kiribati, Indonesia, Vanuatu and Nauru.
The Kiwi contingent will encompass 51 athletes and five management or coaching staff, making it the biggest New Zealand squad to participate in the championships since they were held in Auckland in the 1990s.
Last year New Zealand won 35 gold medals, 15 silver and seven bronze when the championships were held in Cairns, Australia.
Sprinter Chapman, hammer thrower Kruszona and shot putter Smith are in the youth section while sprinter Small will be in the senior women's division.
Chapman will compete individually over 200m and will also be part of Kiwi relay teams in the 4x100m and the 4x400m. She was fourth in the senior girls 100m at the 2012 New Zealand secondary schools championships and a bronze medallist in the junior girls at the same meet in 2011. Her personal best times are 12.54s for the 100m and 26.18s for the 200m.
Kruszona hit the headlines when she was the only Wairarapa athlete to come away from the North Island secondary schools track and field championships at the Pugh Sports Bowl in Masterton with a gold medal, winning the intermediate girls hammer with a throw of 48.30m, more than 3m further than the runner-up. She had earlier placed fourth in the open women's hammer at the prestigious Sylvia Potts classic at Hastings.
Smith might have been the "baby" in the senior girls shot put at the 2012 national secondary schools track and field meet but her best effort of 11.78m was good enough to earn her a silver medal and she threw 11.73m to place third in the same division in the same event at the North Island secondary schools championships in Masterton.
Small will line up in the 100m, 4x100m relay and medley relay in Tahiti. She was sixth in the senior women's 100m at this year's New Zealand track and field champs and sixth in the 200m at the same meet the previous year.
Small has a best time of 12.51s in the 100m and 26.32s in the 200m.
Wairarapa could also lay claim to a fifth New Zealand team member for the Oceania event.
St Matthew's Collegiate's Katie Plimmer is coached by her father in Wellington but represented St Matthew's at the North Island secondary schools championships here, placing second in the senior girls long jump and third in the 100m hurdles. She will contest the youth long jump, triple jump and 100m hurdles next week.