By Mr Dominikovich | Posted: Tuesday June 6, 2023
This is a new Event on the running calendar and is the unofficial South Island Championships.
It was run in fine conditions on Sunday, May 28th over the familiar Ashbury Park 1500m loop. Field sizes were generally in the 20s throughout the eight races with what were surely some of New Zealand's best Secondary School runners attending to get an individual ranking and to contribute to a 3 person team score.
The Year 9 boys race over 3000m was dominated by CBHS. Timaru Boys placed 2nd with George Talbot (7th), Louis Sullivan (10th) and Issac Boorer Lilley (11th) our team. Ned Brown (12th), Isaac Williamson (13th), Will Bailey (14th) and Daniel Heffernan (16th) were our other finishers.
Christchurch Boys’ and St Andrews were the top Under 16 teams in this 3000m race and Timaru Boys’ finished 3rd ahead of Burnside and Kings. Our 3 to score were Hamish Tilsley (10th), Riley Horstmann (14th) and Wiremu Robertson (18th) with Tristan Harding (19th), Murphy Porter (20th), Reuben McKeown (22nd) and Caleb Turner (25th) also running well.
The Senior boys ran over 4500m. Tom Allan battled all the way with Otago Boys’ best runner and finished in 2nd place. With Josh Young in 4th and Baxter Mason 5th this was a comfortable team victory for TBHS ahead of CBHS and Burnside. Malachy Cleland (9th), Ryan Caldwell (13th), Payo O’Sullivan (14th), Max Finlayson (20th), Mac Brown (21st), Michael Tilsley (22nd), Jonty Porter (23rd), Lewis Taylor (24th), Ryan Watt (25th), Luc Todd (26th) and Ashton Bennett (28th) once again showed our excellent depth at this level.
There are Shields for the top overall schools. CBHS were too strong in the boys category and appear to be the top South Island running school with TBHS a comfortable second place. Craighead were the top girls school and in the Intermediate races Gleniti won the boys and Rangi Ruru the girls
