College Sports: Whanganui High School's achievers so far in 2020

Ethan Bryers competes on Whanganui High School's swimming sports day.

Before schools closed this week, Whanganui High School had been keeping up its busy end-of-summer programmes.

The Whanganui Chronicle takes a look at a number of events and stand out performances yet to receive much coverage.

Swimming Sports

Swimming sports was another successful event with plenty of competition and school spirit amongst everyone.

Co-ordinatior Lisa Murphy said there were a few school records broken in the Junior and Intermediate boys grades.

Regan Hanna set a new Junior Boys 100m Freestyle mark with a time of 1m 1.04s, besting the 1m 1.80s time of Adam Millar's that had stood since 2007.

Hanna also set a Junior Boys 50m Breaststroke record with a time of 38.25s, besting Jacob Smith's effort of 38.83s, set in 2011.

Ethan Bryers smashed the Intermediate Boys 100m Freestyle record with a time of 55.89s, which was last set in 2014 by Stefan Hannan with 57.63s.

Bryers also broke the long-held Intermediate Boys 50m Breaststroke record with a time of 34.35s, last set in 2007 by Nicholas Berry with 34.90s.

The WHS touch teams in Palmerston North

Touch

WHS Touch teams headed to Palmerston North on March 14 for the Secondary School Zones Touch Tournament.

The Mixed team did well, winning three of their four pool games.

They went on to win their quarterfinal but lost a hard semifinal against Manukura.

The WHS Girls team finished tied for third with Palmerston North Girls High. Both teams had an awesome day.

The WHS rowers at Lake Karapiro.

Rowing

WHS took away 31 students to compete in the North Island Secondary School Rowing Champs held at Lake Karapiro.

It was great start to the champs with Jordan Manville qualifying for the Boys Under 17 single semifinal.

All told, the WHS had nine A semifinals and the girls Under 15 Octuple went straight to their A Final.

An excellent effort from our WHS rowing crews making it into six B Finals and eight A Finals.

Aspen Fell with her trophy.

Artistic Skating

Aspen Fell had her first Artistic Skating Competition for the 2020 season in Upper Hutt two weekends ago.

She won first place in Junior International Dance.

This is a combined scoring event where and overall total comes from two routines – Style Dance and Free Dance.

Aspen also won first place for Advanced Figures to make a great start to 2020.

Zane Mills-Nossiter

Kayaking

Zane Mills-Nossiter had been selected to trial for the Asia Pacific team in April.

Those from the trial would be part of the NZ Junior Kayak programme in May and from there he would go to Japan to race as part of the New Zealand Team in the Asia Pacific Under 16 championships.

WHS also had some good results from kayakers at the CRNZ champs at Lake Karapiro.
Mills-Nossiter won gold in the Under 16 K1 500m and gold in K2 500m teaming with Angus Sewell.

The pair also won gold as part of the Under 16 K4 500m.

Sewell also won gold in both the Under 14 K1 500 and the Under 16 K1 5000m.

Joshua Barnett

Ironman

It's not just the WHS students doing well in sport endeavours, as staff member Joshua Barnett competed in the 2020 Ironman 70.3 Taupo.

His finishing time of 4h 34.48s was enough to qualify for the Ironman 70.3 World Championships, scheduled to be held in Taupo on November 28-29.

Barnett is proving quite the inspiration to his students.