Athletics Insight: Athletics tours enrich young competitors’ lives

Jonathan Maples will compete in England and Belgium this month.

“What happens on tour, stays on tour.”

The quote suggests any scandalous activities that happen when one travels in a group are not to be discussed with other people afterwards. As mentioned in last week’s column, I believe what happens on many tours for the young has a profound benefit and does not stay on tour but has instead provided positive beneficial experiences.

I would like to correct an error in last week’s article. I said the first international team selected by the New Zealand Secondary Schools Athletics Association was for the cross-match with Victoria in August 1976. That was the first cross-country team but was preceded by a track and field team versus Victoria and New South Wales, part of the New Zealand Games in Christchurch in 1975 following the successful Commonwealth Games a year earlier.

The error was pointed out by NZSS chairman Tony Rogers who should know as he was a young athlete in that team. Eight years later, Rogers ran in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games 1500m final. In the same team in 1975 was Dianne Zorn who was also in Los Angeles following her Olympic debut four years earlier in Montreal. Others in the 1975 team went on to represent New Zealand, highlighting the benefit of the experience gained from such opportunities.

My first overseas athletics experiences were as a school-age athlete when at a naval college in North Wales (HMS Conway). I was selected for the Welsh schools team to compete in the quadrangular with the other home countries.

The journey over to Belfast was in a second-class dormitory on the overnight ferry from Liverpool. On the return, we shared the dormitory with many returning drunken Irishmen - an eye-opening experience for a callow youth.

A year later, it was a journey by rail to my home country of Scotland in which a Scotsman running for England won, a Scotsman running for Wales was second and the home Scot was third.

These were all experiences that changed my life, swapping a career at sea for teaching and enrolling at Loughborough to study physical education and following my athletics ambitions.

My first tour with school-age athletes was in 1979 when I took a Whanganui Collegiate School cross-country team to New South Wales for a short tour.

There were a couple of subsequent cross-country tours to Australia when I opened up the tour to other leading runners from schools in the region. This led to regular biannual track and field tours to the Australian Schools Championships which, in the past, used to be a week later than New Zealand Schools in December. Current Athletics New Zealand high-performance manager Scott Newman was on that first 1987 tour.

Ten such tours followed before Australian Schools moved back to the same week as New Zealand. In years when Whanganui did not have enough qualifying athletes to make up the 10 on tour, athletes from beyond Whanganui were invited to make up the numbers.

I have been fortunate and privileged to lead many New Zealand teams overseas at junior, university and senior level and I know the experiences gained from these have proved invaluable for athletes and the professional development benefited me in so many ways. Although many athletes on such tours may not have continued in the sport, I am confident the experiences gained were enriching.

The track and field team that attended the World University Games in Daegu in 2001 had team members who did not remain in the sport for long but many became teachers who used their experience to make a significant later contribution to the sport, helped by their earlier experiences.

Sport success is judged on performance and that is the team‘s focus. I also believe, especially with younger athletes, there need to be activities arranged that are enriching culturally and such activities were included in my tours after training had been completed.

Athletics New Zealand coach Terry Lomax once said to ambitious athletes at a Young Olympian Camp that if they wanted to get in a team just for travel and a holiday, they should just go on holiday with friends without the inconvenience of training and competing.

Leading Whanganui senior athlete Jono Maples leaves for Europe this weekend for a long-planned trip with friends. Following his outstanding success this season, Maples wants to include athletics. At the start of his trip, athletics is the focus. He has scheduled meets at the Loughborough International Meet (my alma mater) and then in Brussels before joining his friends in Europe.

He looks forward to both the overseas competition (he has prepared well) and his European holiday. Hopefully, he gets the best from both.