ECNISS Championships
A great haul of 12 titles were achieved at the ECNISS
champs held at the Hastings Regional Sports Park. The girls’
tally was the highest from any school, with 9 titles in total. Over
20 schools take part in this event. Once again, Georgia Hulls
was to the fore, breaking the junior 300m record. On top of
that, she won the 100m, 200m and was part of the champion
4x100m team along with Sophia Peterson, Georgia Rathbone
and Monique Thomson. She was second in the high jump and
ran the senior 4x400m in a team that finished second. Jessica
Ford won two titles, the senior long jump and triple jump. Jess
had a busy day, 2nd in the high jump and 4x400, 3rd in the
400m, and 4th in both the 800m and 4x100m. Other winners
were Laila Franklin (senior high jump), Emily Gallagher (intermediate triple jump) and Natalya Taylor (intermediate girls’
javelin).
In the boys’ grades the most notable performance was by
Issac Waihi, who broke the NISS standard in winning the junior
boys’ javelin. Other winners were Tim Keip in the senior 200m
and Richard Russell in the junior triple jump.
NISS Championships
The school had four athletes chosen to represent ECNI
at the NISS championships in Masterton. A fantastic
effort from Georgia Hulls saw her return home with three
medals. She won the junior 100m/200m double, as well
as a silver medal in the 4x100m relay. Georgia Rathbone was also part of the relay team, and performed
creditably in the 100m final, finishing seventh. She competed in the high jump also, finishing an excellent fifth.
This augers well for her, as she is still a junior next year.
Natalya Taylor competed in the intermediate javelin,
where she finished a remarkable fourth. Considering she
has done very little technique training for this event, it
was a wonderful result. By throwing over thirty metres, she
became only the third female to achieve that feat from
HNHS behind Ella Richardson and Lucy Penrice. Unfortunately, the other member of the team, Issac Waihi, pulled
out before the competition.
Coaches
The results were achieved with the help of numerous
coaches. Mr Armon runs his lunch time run programme,
mainly for his distant runners, while Mr Potts at the track
coaches a number of our athlete runners. Our field
athletes, mainly our jumpers, get a lot of tuition from Mr
Murray Anderson. The school is very grateful for the work
that these coaches put in for our athletes.