Medals at New Zealand Secondary School Athletics

Twenty-two of our athletes travelled down to Dunedin to compete at the NZSS Track & Field Championships last weekend. With a relatively young team that are still developing their strength, skill, and speed as athletes, we were very happy with our overall results.

The wind made Friday’s heats and qualifications tricky for everyone and many of our athletes progressed through to the next round of competition.

Jemima Antoniazzi secured silver in the junior girl’s 3000m race that was close right until the last 80m sprint to the finish line. Jemima backed up this great performance with a bronze medal in the 1500m two days later.

Annalies Kalma made qualification look easy with her strong start and consistent performance in the junior girls 200m rounds, finishing the final with silver. She was also a key member of the junior girls 4 x 100m team that ran a huge personal best time for the silver medal in a very competitive relay competition. Other team members were Anna Serafeimidou, Elizabeth McLean and Grace Wisnewski. This was an outstanding result and the very first 4 x 100m medal St Peter’s has won at NZSS.

Annalies is now in Cairns competing at the All Australian Schools Track and Field Championships with the NZSS Team.

The Sunday Road Race was an event our middle distance athletes had been looking forward to all weekend. Strong individual performances were required to be in with a chance for the 3-person and 6-person medals. Led by Charli Miller who secured an individual bronze medal for this event, the team was impressively backed up by Kimbi Rowan-Sanders with a tenth place finish and Kendall Turner following closely to win the gold medal.

The remaining three members of the 6-person team; Courtney Elliott, Ella Bradley, and Dijana Corban ran well to also secure the gold medal.

An impressive result for all the team and another first for St Peter’s to win gold in the teams' events. Charli Miller was also named in the NZSS team for her leading performance in the Road Race.

Many personal best times, distances and heights were achieved over the weekend. It was encouraging to see so many of our first-time athletes compete and make great strides in their events and exceeding expectations. The future is bright for many of our athletes.

A big thank you to the dedicated Athletics Coaching Team and Programme lead by Ange Russek (middle distance), Tori Peeters (throws), Sonia Waddell (hurdles and sprints), Jess Patrick (sprints and relays). Adding to the expertise next year is Steve Rees-Jones, who will be assisting with our cross country programme.