ICING ON THE CAKE: The Wanganui Secondary Schools Team of the Year winners (from left) Caitlyn Alabaster, Sophie Redmayne and Libby Abbott, franked their form with victory in the New Zealand Secondary Schools road race in Timaru at the weekend.PHOTO/SUPPLIED
ICING ON THE CAKE: The Wanganui Secondary Schools Team of the Year winners (from left) Caitlyn Alabaster, Sophie Redmayne and Libby Abbott, franked their form with victory in the New Zealand Secondary Schools road race in Timaru at the weekend.PHOTO/SUPPLIED
Wanganui Collegiate School athletes continued to punch well above their weight at the New Zealand Secondary Schools Championship in Timaru last weekend.
The junior girls especially had something to crow about with the Year 9 road race team dominating schools with far larger numbers to select from. Their success inthe national road race in Timaru rounded off an outstanding year for the youngsters.
The Year 9 road race team, who won the Wanganui Secondary School Team of the Year in October, added the New Zealand Schools Year 9 Road Race Team title to put icing on the cake. Led home by Caitlyn Alabaster in second place, followed by Sophie Redmayne in 10th position and triathlete Libby Abbott in 13th position, combined to be convincing winners of the team title to add to the three and six to score cross country times and successes in relay races throughout the year. Coach Alec McNab said this was all the more remarkable given there are only 24 girls at that level in the school to select from.
"All the bigger schools have far more athletes to choose from. Tauranga Girls' for instance has more than 230 to select from as do many of the others," McNab said yesterday.
The junior (under 16) girls, although having the advantage of being able to use Year 9 athletes, still also have only just over 50 athletes to select from. They too made their mark in Timaru at the weekend. The junior 4 x 100 brought their pre-championship form over recent weeks to further improve and post their best to win by a comfortable margin with slick baton changes.
The quartet of Olivia Seymour, Jordan Hume, Kate Tylee and Grace Godfrey look to have exciting athletic careers ahead of them, McNab said. "Garce Godfrey is really the only top sprinter in the team, so the baton changing technique needed to be slick and it was."
And in the 4 x 400 metres relay they came tantalisingly close to a medal with Godfrey running a sensational anchor leg, but unfortunately ran out of metres and had to settle for fourth place. Year 9 athlete Sophie Redmayne replaced Kate Tylee for this event.