Pakuranga Athletic Club’s Junior Track and Field section really showed their class at the recent Auckland Junior Relay Championships at Mount Smart.
Of the 56 junior relay teams the club entered across a range of age groups and distances, 52 made the podium, including 31 Pakuranga teams who won gold medals.
The highlight of the morning was the club’s 13 Girls 4x400m relay team of Madeleine Du Toit, Jordan Viljoen, Rachel Wagener and Morgan Day, who broke the Auckland Championship record for their age group.
They recorded a time of 4:15.73, reflecting the high calibre of the Pakuranga teams. Five club records were also broken.
Mike Trathen, president of Pakuranga Athletic Club, said the club’s excellent relay results reflected the huge effort that all 102 athletes had put into attending special relay training sessions and their commitment to representing their team and their club to the very best of their ability.
“Athletics is traditionally a very individual sport, but young people love being part of a team,” said Trathen.
“The Auckland Junior Relay Championships allows our junior athletes to do what they love – running, jumping and throwing – but to do this as a team, working together to achieve success and also having a lot of fun together along the way.”
As the largest athletics club in New Zealand, Pakuranga Athletic Club will also feature prominently at the North Island Colgate Games, New Zealand’s premiere junior athletics competition.
The event will be held in Auckland in early January.
The club is hoping for further relay success with 34 relay teams having been entered across its 114 7-14-year-old athletes attending.
