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Year 9 Athletics Initiative

Written by Geoff Moon

Year 9 Athletics Initiative

Athletics has a long and proud history in the Counties Manukau region. We have had Olympic Champions like John Walker and Valerie Vili come through our local schools and achieve on the World stage.Also a lot of athletes have used athletics to transition into other sports including Jonah Lomu, Keven Mealamu, and many netball and Rugby League players who have gone on to national honours.

The sport of athletics at secondary school level has been in decline in recent times ,so an initiative at Counties Manukau Sport to get more structured athletics back at year 9 was introduced in term 4 of the 2011 school year.A one hour competition with high interest and fast moving was introduced.

The pilot programme involved six schools with two qualifying rounds, Section A involving Aorere College, Papatoetoe High School, Southern Cross Campus had two rounds of competition hosted at Southern Cross campus.Section B involving Kings College, Otahuhu College, Alfriston College was hosted at Kings College.

The teams worked hard and performances improved as the athletes become more experienced with using starting blocks and doing events like the steeplechase.The top 3 Teams qualified for the finals and the results were as follows Girls Alfriston College 1st , Otahuhu College 2nd , Southern Cross Campus 3rd . Boys Kings College 1st, Otahuhu College 2nd , Southern Cross Campus 3rd.

The concept of this athletics initiative worked really well and it will be implemented next year on a wider scale.The theory is that as students become more confident with structured athletics they will transition through into the clubs.