finish in the top five of their event. South Island titles were awarded to Cody House, Matthew Todd, Sam King, Jayden Beckett, Kaveni Balenacagi and Nic Murray. The Christ’s College athletics club is an affiliated club through New Zealand athletics, so College athletes can represent their school in inter- club events, in both regional and national competition. In the Canterbury Club champs held in Timaru, College athletes claimed six titles and four other podium finishes. Titles were awarded to Sam King, Callum Long, Patrick Thacker and Jayden Beckett. These athletes and Henry Patterson were selected
to represent Canterbury at the club champs. Hamish Rowley also represented Christ’s College at this event. The highlight from this meet was Sam King achieving three bronze medals and Jayden Beckett receiving a bronze. Director of Sport, Rob Clarke, says “The College athletes are fortunate to have a wonderful full-time athletic set up on Upper over the summer and the support of Graeme Christey and his dedicated College staff and outside coaches. The staff and coaches provide the opportunities for these athletes to prepare well for competition and the results over the recent summer show the success of the season.’’
Cody’s outstanding season
For the 2016 winner of the College Junior Individual Championship, Cody House, athletics is a passion that ticks all the boxes. Currently Cody’s main strengths are 100m, 200m, hurdles and long jump. As he is still 15, it is natural to be strong in several events, but Cody says he will probably concentrate on one event. Long jump is his best, and of course sprint is part of this, he says. College athletic records have been tumbling since Cody started competing at College. This year at the College Athletics Championship, Cody broke four existing College athletic records in 100m junior, 100m hurdles junior, 200m junior, and long jump junior. Graeme Christey says “To set four records is exceptional at an athletics championship; but to have four set by the same boy is highly unusual. I’ve never heard of that before.’’
But it is his new long jump junior record of 5.79m that is the most amazing. Old Boy, Mike Andrew’s, long jump record in 1946 had not been broken for 70 years and this year Cody managed to beat his record. In the two previous years, Cody broke five existing records. At the Canterbury Secondary Schools’ Championships this year, Cody won the award for the Most Outstanding Junior Athlete. He thinks this was “pretty awesome’’ as a large number of athletes took part in the competition, and all events were considered for the winner of the award. School athletic teams tend to be fairly small groups, and boys train in clubs as well as at school. Cody says “I love this because instead of inter-school rivalry we compete against our peers. It is a great atmosphere and very social. Through athletic training, I have a lot of friends from other
schools and many are from different year groups. We all train hard and compete together and enjoy our common interest.’’
Cody‘s goal is to go to the Under-20 World Athletic Championships. He
acknowledges that qualifying for this competition is a big challenge, but says he has another four years to train as hard as he can and to really give it a go.
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College Issue 31 2016
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