Whanganui secondary school athletes Harriet Jakobs and Grace Fannin winter training at Cooks Gardens. Photo / Jonathan Maples
Tournament Week is a winter highlight for secondary school sport and, for most players, marks the end of the winter sport season.
Next week sees the 2025 Tournament Week bring winter code tournaments to venues throughout New Zealand. Tournaments give players that special time together as a team over a week while lessons are learned by playing many games over just five days.
I am pleased that running has been added to the sports within Tournament Week, providing opportunities with the second New Zealand Secondary Schools Road Race Relay Festival at Pakūranga on August 28-29, with the event returning to last year’s trial venue.
The festival caters for the many students whose winter sport is cross country. The Cross Country Championships in June draw many who play other sports in winter and are not available for Tournament Week.
I have always believed that the discipline and fitness gained by running helps other sports but, at the same time, I value that those who run full-time can now enjoy the benefits of participating in a tournament and enjoy the team aspect that relay running provides.
Last week I mentioned that the increase in planning meetings suggested that summer was almost upon us. It is noticeable that Cooks Gardens has seen a gradual increase in athletes training and the trickle will steadily increase after Tournament Week.
Throughout the winter, some have added a couple of track sessions as a supplement to their training for their winter sport codes. They and their coaches will have appreciated the base fitness benefits that athletics provided and, at the same time, ensure they are setting a solid foundation on which to build athletics success through the 2025-26 season.
Over the next few weeks, I will feature athletes from each of our local schools, some of whom have already shown promise, and introduce others who may make a breakthrough in the coming season.
Two Year 12 Whanganui Girls’ College athletes, Grace Fannin and Harriet Jakobs, are the first to be featured.
They both play in the Whanganui Girls’ College A netball team, with Fannin also playing in the Whanganui under-16 representative team and the Kaierau A3 team on Monday evenings.
Both have managed a couple of additional basic training sessions over and above their netball commitments and both trained as athletes in the summer. The more experienced Fannin encouraged her friend Jakobs to come to training late last year.
Jakobs had been a regular at Club Nights throughout her time at secondary schools, happy to be a participant but doing little other training.
Highlights from last season for Jakobs include attending the Porritt Classic and being selected for Whanganui Schools for the North Island Secondary Schools at the same venue in April. Although finishing close to the tail of the field at North Islands, she gained further experience by running in the 4 x 100m relay.
More importantly, she improved both her 100m and 200m times by over a second over the last two months of the season. This encouragement after only a few weeks of more formal training has led to supplementing her winter sport with a couple of athletic sessions and has given her the confidence to set goals in the search for further improvement in the season ahead.
Training mate Fannin also attended the North Island Schools, finishing eighth in the 400m (personal best), sixth over 80m hurdles (another personal best) and fourth in the 300m hurdles, an event she had finished in fifth in the junior grade at New Zealand Schools last December.
In 2024 she was on the 300m hurdles podium at under-16 level at the Athletics New Zealand Championships. This year’s championships were in distant Dunedin and she did not attend.
Fannin also ran in both relays for Whanganui at the North Island Schools (fifth in both).
Fannin should be encouraged by her steady improvement in a wide range of events and should be especially pleased with the technically sound 200m hurdles at the Porritt Classic. As Fannin does not turn 17 until March, she is still young enough to run in under-18 at the 2026 Athletics New Zealand Championships which is among her goals for the forthcoming season.
It was good to hear that New Zealand and Olympic high jump champion Hamish Kerr won at the recent Diamond League in Silesia, Poland.
Four weeks out from the world championships, he tops the Diamond League high jump standings.
Kerr has been a regular at the Pak’nSave Cooks Classic and is the stadium record holder, having beaten his record on three occasions.
He is clearly coming into form at the right time.