Records tumble for Collegiate athletes

SMOOTH TRANSITION: In one flawless motion Tayla Brunger passes the batton to Sophie Redmayne to win the 4x400 junior girls relay at the NZ Secondary Schools champs in Auckland at the weekend.

The Sunday afternoon finals at the New Zealand Secondary Schools with its non-stop action culminating in the relays is always special and even more so when so many athletes competing are Whanganui athletes.

13 Whanganui athletes (12 from Collegiate and the very promising Rebecca Baker from Whanganui High School) appeared in the afternoon track finals in Auckland at the weekend with seven relay teams featuring in the top eight.

This brought the curtain down on an extremely successful championships that saw Wanganui Collegiate return home with 12 medals.

Genna Maples was the busiest of these athletes winning the Junior Girls 100 metres (12.42) from Maia Broughton of Lincoln High School. Broughton reversed the result an hour later in the 200 metres. On the previous day Maples had taken silver in the Long Jump with a personal best 5.48 metre effort that also took the Collegiate record.

Tayla Brunger won the Junior Girls 400 metres with a superbly judged race. Brunger had won both her heat and semi-final and in the final sliced over a second off her previous best to complete the one lap in 57.01 seconds to also take the Collegiate senior record at the age of 14.

It was fitting that the previous record holder Janiene Newman (nee Ashbridge), who set the record back in 1991, was present at the team dinner on Sunday evening to congratulate Brunger in person.

Brunger and Maples were both in the Junior Girls 4x100 metre relay team that broke an even older record when in the heats on the Saturday afternoon along with Georgina Duncan and Sophie Redmayne they took the baton round in 49.51 to eclipse the record set by Pinehouse School in 1980.

In the final the team ran out as convincing winners with a little more conservative effort (50.27). The 4x400 team of Brunger, Maples, Redmayne and Emma Osborne dominated their race to win by the length of the straight in a performance of 4:04.65 that was also a record set by Motueka High School a year previously.

The other Wanganui Collegiate relay came from the Senior Boys 4x100 team.

It was clear from the heat that when they finished just one hundredth of a second behind Kings High School (Dunedin) in time both having won their heats that the final was going to be an epic battle. Added to this mix was that Collegiate's leading sprinter Harry Symes had been battling a hamstring injury all weekend and that it was far from guaranteed that he would be able to take his place in the final.

Earlier in the afternoon Symes had finished with silver in the 200 metres but had looked far from comfortable. In the final Symes held together to anchor a fine team effort recording Collegiate's eighth victory in the event in 42.97 that goes to third on the Collegiate all time ranking.

Cody Hemi, who is in the Whanganui Senior 7s squad, ran first handing over to Luke Foster who passed on to Sam Merson who as always ran a superb bend giving the baton to Symes to finish the task.

Symes, who had missed two of the Regional Leagues, was ably replaced at those meets by the reserve Tom Matthews and in Wellington the team had run a time that would have gained a podium place, clearly illustrating the depth of the squad.

Christian Conder came so close to recording gold in the Senior Boys Steeples but had to settle for silver in a personal best 6:06.18 seconds. Jane Lennox also set a personal best in the Senior Girls Steeples with a personal best 7:19.42 but also had to settle for second behind Manawatu/Whanganui Centre team mate Tessa Webb (Feilding High School).

Caitlyn Alabaster finished 4th in the inaugural junior steeples. She also finished 4th in the Road Race earlier in the day but gained some consolation by gaining a bronze along with Sarah Lambert and Emma Abraham in the 3 to score team event on the road.

Collegiate's other medal came from Chilean exchange student Francisco Claro in the inaugural Junior Boys Pole Vault when he equalled his personal best for gold.

203 schools took part in the 44th New Zealand Secondary Schools Championships with 1400 entries received from those schools in what remains New Zealand's largest track and field event. Medals will have been won from athletes from over 75 of these schools with many more schools providing finalists. Next week I will look at some of the other Whanganui meritorious performances that did not provide a podium position.