After the weekend’s Athletics South Africa (ASA) u.16, u.18 and u.20 Track and Field championships in Pietermaritzburg, one fact stands out like a pole above water – Athletics Gauteng North (AGN) still has the best junior athletes in the country.
This fact is confirmed by just one look at the table showing how many medals were won during the championships.
The athletes of AGN brought home a total of 113 medals. This includes 43 gold, 34 silver and 36 bronze medals. AGN’s grand total is very close to double the number of medals (58) won by their nearest rival, Central Gauteng Athletics (CGA).
Boland Athletics finished in third place with 54 medals, followed by Athletics Free State (41), Athletics Central North West (20), Western Province Athletics (17), Athletics Mpumalanga (16) and Athletics Vaal Triangle (11), while Athletics South Western Districts and Limpopo Athletics ended with 10 medals each. Not one of the other six provincial teams could reach double figures.
The event produced several world-class performances, proving once again that South Africa is teeming with young talent that, if managed properly, can easily establish our country among the top ten athletics nations in the world. Or even better.
A total of 96 athletes managed to deliver 102 performances worth 950 points and more on the Athletics Performance Evaluation (APE) tables and which are considered world-class. Among these 102 achievements count 35 who achieved full marks (1000) on the APE table.
However, the standard of youth athletics in South Africa is also underlined by the fact that only three championship records could be broken during the event, despite all the world-class performances.
AGN was responsible for one of these achievements, when the AGN team broke the national record in the girls u.18 4x400m relay event. Zante van der Merwe, Tumi Ramokgopa, Arrette Burger and Colene Scheepers combined well to clock 3:42.36, charging to an impressive victory.
Scheepers (53.92s) and Van der Merwe (54.05s) also dominated the 400m race for girls u18, taking gold and silver, both earning 1000 APE points with their efforts.
Other AGN athletes who earned the perfect 1000 points on the APE table with their performances were Matodz Ndou (gold in the 400m hurdles for boys u.18 with a time of 50.89s); Brian Raats (gold with a height of 2.20m in the high jump for men u.20); Timeke Coetzee (gold with a distance of 6.28m in the long jump for girls u.18); Asande Mthembu (gold with a distance of 8.08m in the men’s u.20 long jump); Alicia Khunou (gold with a distance of 17.11m in the shot put for girls u.18, as well as gold in the discus with her distance of 49.32m) and Hencu Lamberts (gold with a distance of 19.33m, shot put for boys u.18).
All these above mentioned athletes from AGN have also directly qualified with their achievements to be part of the national junior teams that will participate in the combined junior African championship at the end of April in Lusaka, Zambia.
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