A team of eight athletes travelled to Christchurch to compete in the South Island Secondary Schools Athletics Championships last weekend.

Skye Wilson (U16) continued her fine form in the long jump, breaking the South Island record with a leap of 5.42m into a brisk headwind. This broke the previous record by 12cm. Five minutes later, Skye was on the start line of the 80m hurdles where she finished with a third placing. She concluded her individual events with another third-place finish in the 100m.

Isla McQueen, a very accomplished hammer thrower, demonstrated great technical skill to win the U17 hammer throw with a distance of 41.46m.

Eva McLean (U16) showed incredible grit in the distance events, securing a silver medal in the 3000m. Unfortunately, Eva was forced to scratch from the 1500m later in the meet as she was just too unwell to compete.

Lailah Robson (U17) impressed in the highly competitive 100m and 200m events with great performances in the preliminaries, making it comfortably into the finals. Lailah then showed her class by taking the silver medal in both of these races.

Elzanne Hamman (U16) showed her versatility by taking second place in the hammer throw and another second place in the 200m hurdles.

Libby Norfield (U16) leaped over the bar at 1.50m in the high jump to claim the silver medal after a count-back was applied to separate the jumpers at this height.

Lucy Fitzgerald, Delaney Womack and Delilah Brown competed strongly in their respective events and gained valuable experience at this level.

The meeting concluded with the highly anticipated relays. Speed was not lacking in the OGHS U17 4x100m team. Libby Norfield came into the team to replace Sienna Nicholson who was in Twizel on rowing duties.

The very young sprinting team of Elzanne Hamman, Skye Wilson, Libby Norfield and Lailah Robson went into this event as top seeds and delivered clean baton changes and great top speed to win the race by over 8 metres and become crowned the South Island champions for the U17 4X100m relay event. Their time of 51.28s would have also given them a win in the U20 race.