WSS Cross Country event information

It has been said “sports do not build character, they reveal it”. Although sports such as crosscountry running might be seen as building tenacity and stickability it is probably truer to say it reveals these traits and gives the opportunity to display them. The demands of the sport do provide a challenge as unlike other sports there are no halftime breaks, no time-outs, no substitutions and no injury breaks.

One hundred and sixty runners from throughout the region will face the test at the Tawhero Golf Course this afternoon in the annual Whanganui Secondary Schools Cross-Country Championships. The excellent course was first used for the 1991 New Zealand Secondary Schools Cross-Country Championships. Sport Whanganui took the initiative in negotiating a return to the circuit for last year’s event and such was the success last year that the event returns to Tawhero today.

Organisers are also repeating the combination of grades in one race for girls and one race for boys. All three grades in the girls run three kilometres (two 1500 metre laps). This combination of grades gives experience of starting with large numbers. Runners have coloured bibs to identify the three grades and separate grade individual and team results will be given for each grade. In the boys grade the runners start together and as with the girls there will be separate grade results. The Year 9 grade runs 3000m and the senior and under 16 grades run four kilometres (a one kilometre lap followed by two circuits of the 1500 metre main loop).

The 160 entries are split almost exactly between the two genders. The Year 9 boys with 21 and the senior girls with 25 entries are the smallest grades.

Whanganui Collegiate Schools and Whanganui High School, as with track and field, have the largest entries and are the only school to have both three and six to score teams in all six grades.

Nga Tawa as a single sex school has full teams in all thee girls graders. There are at least four school contesting the tree to score team events in all six grades with five schools contesting the junior boys (under-16) grade. It is a little disappointing that in some grades a school is fielding two athletes just one short of giving the opportunity of the runners sharing in the team aspect of the sport.

Whanganui Collegiate will be favoured to win the senior boys team race as last year they finished second at New Zealand Schools with all runners returning. They are strengthened by the arrival of New Zealand Schools International Andres Hernandez.

They will be kept honest by a solid Whanganui High School team of well performed athletes who gained medals at North Island Schools in separate disciplines.

Although fields might be much smaller than a couple of decades ago, there is quality on show.

There are five New Zealand Schools representatives competing in the two senior fields. In the boys, Liam Back, Andres Hernandez and Zach Bellamy (Collegiate) all competed on the Sunshine Coast last August and Rebecca Baker (High School) and Sarah Lambert (Collegiate) in the girls. These athletes are, not surprisingly, expected to be at the front of their respective boys’ and girls’ senior fields.

Baker over the summer made outstanding progress on the track and will be favoured to win the girls title although Lambert will have gained confidence from her eight second improvement on her relay leg at Karori earlier in the month and hopes to close last year’s gap.

Back, who was second in the New Zealand Schools Cross-Country last year, is expected to head his school and international teammates in the boys race.

Younger grades are always harder to predict. In the junior boys, Nat Kirk, winner of the Year 9 race last year, starts as favourite while in the junior girls Whanganui Schools track representatives Adelaide Roper (Nga Tawa), Josephine Perkins and Aba Brabyn (Collegiate), Charlotte Baker (High School) should contest places.

Daniel Sinclair (Collegiate) dominated the Year 9 athletes on the track and is expected to lead the Year 9 boys home while the Year 9 girls are almost impossible to predict.

The girls race is at 1.30pm with the boys at 2pm. The start and finish is at the Gonville Hockey Turf end of the Tawheo Golf Course. 

By Alex McNab
Whanganui Chronicle 23/5/19