TWO meet records, 10 National Junior Qualifiers and eight gold medals highlighted the Trinity College Athletics Team’s performance in the 2020 VIVA All School Games and VIVA All Schools Team Championships.
With 31 athletes competing – the most of any school – and with 18 taking part for the first time in this competition for the first time, the number of personal bests recorded was an acknowledgement to the athletes’ training and dedication.
Alanah Gregory (Year 10) and Jett Carlin (Year11) both set new meet records in their respective events – the U16 Girls javelin, with a throw of 42.56m breaking the old meet record by .80m, and in the U18 Hammer Throw with a throw of 69.43m breaking his own meet record by 3.21m.
Both won gold medals and the status of National Junior Qualifier for the Australian Junior Nationals in 2021.
Ten athletes were also named in AthleticsSA’s TeamSA for the 2020/21 National Athletics Championships due to their performances at the event.
Ashton Coles, Austin Nykke, and Ayden Colbourne will be making their first appearances for Team SA, while Alanah Gregory, Amelie Burns, Jessica Lally, Jett Carlin, Lauren Smith, Logoh Tligi and PJ Carlin will return to the side for the second consecutive year.
In the team competitions, Trinity College took the Boys Champions crown by a comfortable margin, with its 127.5 points beating second place Mercedes College (82 points).
Trinity also finished runner-up Girls Champions, with its 68 total points falling well short of a dominant performance from St Peter’s Girls (112.5 points).
Trinity athletics co-ordinator Wendy Stimson oversees two training sessions per week with the students, and said it was great for the kids be able to compete again.
"Athletics, as with every other sport and leisure activity, has been impacted by COVID-19 in 2020 with very few competitions taking place – there’s usually eight or 10 events, but this year it was four,” she said.
“The success of the athletes is a credit to their training regime and the coaches who assist their development through the Trinity College co-curricula program and local athletics clubs.
“In the cases of Jett Carlin and Alanah Gregory, to be breaking meet records so early in the athletics season after the disappointment of the National Championships being cancelled in March shows they, and others, should have a very successful summer.
“To have the most athletes of any school competing for TeamSA for the second successive year indicates that track and field at Trinity College is again on the right path, similar to the school days of Olympian Chelsea Jaensch in the late 1990s to early 2000s."