Unknown quantities make their name at champs

STANDOUT: Whanganui's Tayla Brunger is now the North Island Junior 300m champion and record holder after an outstanding North Island Secondary Schools meeting in Auckland last weekend. PHOTO/RICHMOND WELLS

The Whanganui Secondary Schools team had a successful journey north to the North Island Secondary Schools Championships in Auckland at the weekend returning with six titles, six seconds and four fourth placings. However, what was especially pleasing was how many athletes competing for the first time at this level were very strongly represented in this success.

Whanganui has over the years produced a number of national class athletes who in their early secondary school years did not feature on the podium or in many cases did not make finals. The class of 2016 juniors demonstrate exciting talent which was evident throughout the weekend.

I suggested a week ago that for many, including Genna Maples, pictured last Thursday, that the journey north was a step into the unknown. Maples made this step and after an outstanding weekend will certainly not remain unknown by her fellow competitors.

Twelve-year-old Maples won the 100 metres in a slick 12.67 seconds, the 200m in 25.93 and was only just beaten by an Australian in the triple jump, but won the North Island title with a 10.09m leap. Maples was beaten by the same Australian in the long jump and lost the North Island title by just 1cm with a personal best 5.28m effort.

Maples rounded off an outstanding weekend by anchoring the 4 x 100 team of Georgia Matson, Emma Osborne and Tayla Brunger with a solid victory in a time tantalisingly close to a North Island record. The all Collegiate quartet from a small cohort at the school defeated regionally selected combinations.

Arguably the performance of the team came from her training partner Brunger who took 0.37 seconds off Maples' Wanganui Collegiate 300m record and a huge 0.5 second slice out of the North Island junior record stopping the clock at a sensational 40.65 seconds.

Brunger chased Maples all the way home in the 200m to take second in a personal best 26.34 seconds. As well as being in the winning relay team Brunger was (fourth New Zealander) in the aforementioned junior triple jump.

Logan Henry became Wanganui Collegiate School's first junior champion winning the triple jump with a pleasing 11.30m effort and also finished second in the long jump with a best of 5.61m.

Two Richard Drabczynski-coached throwers had podium finishes in the junior girls grades. Phoebe Collier (Collegiate) threw a 4m personal best to come second in the javelin while her training partner Sophie Andrews (High School) took third with a similar personal best in the junior hammer.

There were other junior efforts to savour. Rebecca Baker (High School) ran a personal best to make the 800m final and ran another best the next day to finish a highly creditable fifth in the junior 1500m with a massive personal best and sub five minute performance, while Collegiate's Isabel Brabyn made the open girls 300m final finishing seventh. Brabyn, still in Year 9 and new to hurdling, was also was just outside the 70m hurdles final finishing 10th - highly creditable for an athlete who only started hurdling in February.

Jane Lennox ran well to take second in the open Steeplechase with her Collegiate team mate Caitlyn Alabaster still in year 10 finishing fourth slicing over 8 seconds off her previous best in an open event.

Harry Symes ran third in the 100m Senior Boys with personal bests in both heat in final, the latter was a Collegiate School record (10.90 seconds). Unfortunately on the eve of his USA Tour he damaged a hamstring in the 4 x 100 relay.

He only just made the baton change allowing his team (Luke Foster, who had earlier finished 5th in the 100m with a personal best 11.40, Sam Merson and Cody Hemi to take a highly creditable bronze).

The intermediate 4 x 100 quartet of Olivia Seymour, Jordan Hume, Kate Tylee and Grace Godfrey, who in December won gold for Collegiate at NZ Schools had to settle for bronze against regionally selected teams.

Anchor leg runner Grace Godfrey had earlier taken second in the Intermediate girls 400m, breaking a run of fourth places and giving a confidence boost for the Oceania Championships in Tahiti this weekend.

There were a host of personal bests and a further six athletes or relay teams who finished fourth.

A sick Oliver O'Leary now on the California tour missed out on a possible 800m medal, Symes' injury cost a 200m chance and could have enhanced our relay tally while overseas bound Opetini Dryden and Christian Conder chose to sit out the meet. Excellent results that could have been sensational. It was a brave step into the unknown.