Curtain falls of Whanganui athletic club season as North Island champs loom at Cooks Gardens

Preparing for North Island champs, Ana Brabyn ran her fastest over 800 metres since finishing 5th as a 13-year-old in the NZSS under 16 final in December at Tuesday's club night. PHOTO/Rob van Dort

The curtain came down on a long club season on Tuesday night in near perfect conditions.

The club season started in October when we shared the ground with the Whanganui rugby team preparing for their successful title preparation and ended on Tuesday sharing with football - an illustration of the dominance of winter sport on the New Zealand sporting scene.

Tuesday provided a good final workout for athletes preparing for the North Island Championships which is the last major event of the 2017-2018 summer season.

The championships are to be held on the same Cooks Gardens track on the 7th and 8th April. The middle distance events provided some excellent confidence lifting performances for athletes in the final stages of preparation.

Ana Brabyn ran her fastest over 800 metres since finishing 5th as a 13-year-old in the NZSS under 16 final in December.

Brabyn is still an under 14 for North Island and her excellent win and manner in which she won (2:21.76) bodes well for the championship.

Sarah Lambert, in finishing second with her personal best (2:24.01), gave the 1500m/3000m specialist a good speed workout.

Joseph Sinclair had a great battle with Travis Bayler over 600 metres with Sinclair prevailing in a personal best time of 1:23.51. Bayler also ran a best of 1:24.22 which will probably be of no help as he decides on whether to go for the 400 metre/800 metre double both on Saturday 7th April or whether to concentrate on 400 metres the event he came 4th at the Athletics New Zealand Championships under 18 earlier in the month.

Sinclair also finished 4th in the 800 metres and Tuesday's timely performance is a real confidence boost.

Emma Osborne and Rebecca Baker renewed their rivalry over 600 metres. Osborne, the NZSS Schools under 16 400 metre champion, is making great progress over 800 metres and Tuesday's emphatic win in a national class 1:37.18 comes at a good time in her final preparation.

Baker, who won the junior 1500m at NZSS, demonstrated that she has good leg speed finishing in 1:41 44 while 400 metre runner Grace Godfrey demonstrated that she has strength finishing in 1:44.09.

Genna Maples looked good out of the blocks over 60metres and combined well with Osborne over the 2x100 metres. an event that drew a field of 19 pairings.

Morgan Murray used the evening well with some good speed work in sprint events, while Emma Bedford set a 2018 best and equal PB in the high jump with a 1.50 metre leap and clearly showed some of the benefits of the session with Terry Lomax (national jumps coach leader) last week.

As a home North Island, Whanganui will be fielding our largest ever team and including a small group of athletes who have been entered for relays only has a total of 80 athletes.

While Wanganui Collegiate and Whanganui High School have the largest contingent there are athletes from Nga Tawa, Ruapehu College, Cullinane, Rangitikei College, Whanganui Girls College and Whanganui City College in the team.

Track and Field, as I have said before in this column, requires a huge number of officials and helpers and we are still short of both officials and helpers for the championships. We have long been aware of this need and the difficulty getting helpers to travel to the regions.

It was for this reason we applied and were successful with a grant from Lion Foundation for accommodation as we were increasingly aware that our volunteers were paying to help.

The weekend is a standard one, but the early Easter has perhaps given the impression that the season has ended or maybe the steady encroachment of winter sport into March has added to our problems.

In short we are short of help and any offers would be gratefully accepted. We have a great team on the track, I only hope it can be matched off the track.