Collegiate hauls in medals

HAMMER TIME: Collegiate's Sam Donald's hammer throw bronze was his first medal at a NZ Secondary Schools Track and Field Championships.PHOTO/ROB VAN DORT 10122014WCSUPSAM

THE curtain has come down on a highly successful 42nd NZ Secondary Schools Track & Field Championship. Throughout Saturday the sun shone and on Sunday the threatening rain did not arrive until 10 minutes after the final event.

The huge team of more than 100 officials and dozens of volunteers contributed to the success of the meeting and hundreds of athletes returned to their homes with a positive view of Wanganui.

Wanganui Collegiate decathlete, Max Attwell, was perhaps the Wanganui athlete of the meeting.

He was the first winner of the day in his heat of the 300m Hurdles at 9am on Saturday and was a member of the winning Collegiate 4x400m team in the last event of the meeting at 5.20pm on Sunday. In between, Attwell took the gold medal in the 300m hurdles final, stumbling on the penultimate flight, but recovering to take the title with a personal best performance.

He also ran the anchor leg of the successful Collegiate 4x100m relay team with an outstanding run into the strong head wind on the home straight. On the previous evening, his team of Charlie McCartin, Harry Symes and Josh Ledger had come within 5/100ths of a second of the school record (42.86).

Unfortunately on Sunday morning the wind picked up as Geordie Beamish had been targeting the NZ Schools 3000m record. In the race, Beamish did all the work with an impressive front-running performance but finished shy of the record, however he produced a personal best time of 8:24.08s.

Beamish also ran the second leg in the 4x400m team which ran 3:21.57s, winning the race by an impressive 5 seconds.

The performance was the third fastest ever at NZ Schools. The other team members were Max Attwell, Harry Symes and Josh Ledger.

Charlie McCartin had an excellent meeting taking 3rd place in the 110m hurdles with a personal best performance (15.07s) into the stiff head wind (1.6 metres per second). He took another bronze medal in the 300m metre hurdles with his first sub 40-second performance (38.97s). McCartin ran the first leg of the 4x100 metres.

Richard Drabczynski's throwing squad added to the Collegiate medal haul with Sam Donald taking third in the Hammer and Opetini Dryden in the Junior Boys' Javelin, the winner of the event was another Drabczynski coached Aiden Smith (Palmerston North Boys' High School).

Josh Ledger was the fourth member of the winning 4x400 team and also ran in the winning 4x100 metre team.

Ledger finished 4th in the 800 metres where he paid the penalty of running too fast in the first lap, losing his lead only metres from the line with just over a second separating the top four.

Alice Bird was another to finish just outside the medals finishing 4th in the steeplechase. Earlier in the day she had come 7th in the senior girls' road race giving a major contribution to the winning effort of her 3 and 6 to score Collegiate teams.

Her teammates were Megan Mackay who ran superbly for 13th position, closely followed by Sophie Collins (18th), Jazmin Phillips (20th), Rosie Steuart-Muirhead (21st) and Georgina Hobson (24th).

Earlier in the morning the Collegiate Year 9 road runners took 3rd in both the 3 and 6 to score team events at the Kowhai Park circuit.

Mia Gemmell was 16th, Emma Abraham 18th, Brittney Matthews 28th, Rebecca Brown 44th, Kate Wells 45th and Grace Godfrey 48th.

The best individual performance on the road from a Wanganui athlete came from Christian Conder, who finished 3rd after a titanic battle in the finishing straight. Conder was rewarded with a place in the NZ Schools team. Max Attwell and Geordie Beamish were selected for the NZ Schools Track and Field Team. While the selected team does not travel, it does have access to funding if members become part of any New Zealand team or development team, which in the case will be extremely useful for Attwell who is travelling on a development tour to America at the end of the track season.

The 13 medals won by Collegiate athletes was the highest ever from the school at the NZ Schools and the six titles won equalled the best ever performance. But in terms of top eight performances, the teams of 2011 and 2006 did slightly better.