Whanganui secondary school athletes triumphant at championships

Genna Maples (centre) dashes to one her three golds, this time in the junior girls' 100m at the New Zealand Secondary Schools champs in Hawkes Bay at the weekend.

Whanganui athletes produced a series of outstanding performances at the New Zealand Secondary Schools Championships at the weekend that matched the sparkling Hawkes Bay sunshine.

There were 17 medal winning performances with 26 Whanganui athletes returning with at least one medal in their luggage. Wanganui Collegiate returned with their best ever medal return from a NZ Schools Championships (6 gold, 6 silver and 4 bronze medals). In the first of two articles I will focus on the gold medals.

Genna Maples had a memorable championships. She won the junior girls 100 metres in 12.07 seconds, a personal best holding out close Canterbury rival Maria Broughton by six one hundredths of a second this was reversed in the 200 metres later in the day when Broughton prevailed with both running wind aided best times (24.52, 24.58).

In the aforementioned 100 metres both enjoyed the perfect 2.0 metre/second legal wind. Maples confirming her place at the top of the New Zealand under 18 rankings. Maples also won the Long Jump with her opening 5.42 metre effort in the first round allowing Maples the luxury of sitting out the remaining rounds preserving energy for the remaining events. Maples ran in both winning relay teams which I will refer to later.

Last week I mentioned that Rebecca Baker (Whanganui High School) was an exciting prospect and in the Hastings sun she made her mark winning the junior girls 1500 metres with a scintillating final sprint to set an impressive personal best of 4:38.96. This was a six second improvement and even more significantly it was five seconds ahead of the second placed Jemima Antoniazzi from St Peters School.

At North Island and also at last year's NZSS Baker fell into the trap of attempting to double with 800 metres. In Hastings she wisely concentrated on the 1500 metres. Baker is an exciting prospect.

Whanganui made it two consecutive wins when Liam Back won the junior 1500 metres. In a typically championship cagey slow first two laps things were beginning to get a little rough. Liam swept to the outside and put in a stronger lap that began to separate the field and his outstanding final lap clocked at 57.1 second (a move he had practiced 10 days earlier at a club night) he took his first major track title.

Emma Osborne won the 400 metres junior title with an impressive performance. Her time of 56.57 was not only faster than the senior winner but also set a Collegiate School record. Her Wanganui Collegiate team mate Tayla Brunger finished second. Brunger who has missed most of the term with injury did well to record a season best of 57.96 which was also better than the senior one lap winner.

Osborne was selected as a member of the New Zealand Schools paper team (one of only two juniors so named). The travel grant associated with selection will be of immediate value as Osborne travels immediately to Adelaide to compete in the Australian All Schools.

The Wanganui Collegiate junior relay squads ended the championships by defending their 4x100 and 4x400 titles in style and in the process eclipsed their New Zealand Schools records set last year in Auckland.

In the heat on the Saturday evening the 4x100 team demonstrated that there was every chance that they could threaten their 2016 record when their 49.64 was only hundredths above the record. In the final the team of Tayla Brunger, Georgia Matson, Emma Osborne and Genna Maples nailed their exchanges to set a new record of 49.45.

The 4x400 team of Brunger, Ana Brabyn , Maples and Osborne clocked 4:02.74 to beat their own New Zealand Schools record set last year by nearly two seconds winning the race by over 10 seconds in impressive style.

I will look at the other medals and other outstanding efforts in a subsequent article and will also will report from Adelaide on the performances of the Whanganui athletes in the New Zealand Secondary Schools at the Australian Championships.