Impressive haul for Huntley

Curtis Heaphy (left), Mathew Jamieson, Fred McVerry, Logan Hoskin, Nathaniel Leask, Daniel Johnston, Adelaide Roper, Bianca Verdonk, Lilly Sherriff, Lucy Trotter, and Ashleigh Alabaster (crouching).

THE RELATIVELY small Huntley School punched well above its weight bringing home gold, silver and bronze from the New Zealand Schools National Championship Triathlon competition in Queenstown last week.

In fact, the small Rangitikei school won back-to-back gold at the meeting after the U12 boys team repeated the performance of last year's Huntley crew in the same age group.

Headmaster Sam Edwards said with a role of just 148 students, there were far fewer athletes to select from compared to the far larger institutions around the country making this year's result even more meritorious.

Deputy headmaster and triathlete coach Gareth Wood said a crew of 11 youngsters made the journey south, including six boys and five girls making up the U12 and U13 teams.

The triathlon involved a 175m swim, an 8km cycle and a 1.7km run.

This year the championship was held at Jack's Point, an emerging settlement set below The Remarkables mountain range on the shores of Lake Wakatipu.

"There are teams and individual events and our athletes did the school proud with the U12 boys team repeating last year's gold winning performance," Wood said.

"The U13 girls won silver, the U12 girls bronze and the U13 boys finishing fifth. We also had some very good individual results with Mathew Jamieson, who was in the gold-winning U12 boys team, claimed silver in his individual age group event, while Daniel Johnston finished second in the open water 500m swim, a separate event on the programme.

"We were absolutely delighted with all their performances at a competition that is rapidly growing in popularity. The competition is for U12 to U19 and this year there were about 700 athletes mainly from secondary schools," Wood said.