Marondera hosts Nash athletics championships

Sport
THE country’s 10 provinces will converge at Peterhouse College in Marondera on March 20-21 for the National Association for Secondary School Heads (Nash) national athletics championships.

THE country’s 10 provinces will converge at Peterhouse College in Marondera on March 20-21 for the National Association for Secondary School Heads (Nash) national athletics championships.

SUKOLUHLE MTHETHWA SPORTS REPORTER

Stiff competition will be expected during the two-day show as the competition will be used to select athletes to represent the country in the Confederations of School Sport Association of Southern Africa (Cossasa) championships to be held in Botswana in May.

Head-in-charge of athletics Philip Chikomwe said they were preparing for this year’s competition.

“Peterhouse College is going to host this year’s Nash national athletics championships. It is a very important event because we want to pick a team that will represent the country in the Cossasa games in May. We are looking at surpassing the records that were set in last year’s competition in the Cossasa games,” he said.

Cross-country events are lined up for the first day with the Under-16 girls, Under-16 boys and Under-17 girls taking part in the 4km race while the Under-20 girls will feature in the 6km race. The Under-17 and Under-20 boys will participate in the 8km race.

Other events lined up for the first day of the competition are 300m hurdles, field events which include long jump, triple jump, discus, high jump, and javelin with the 100m sprint, 800m, 400m, 1 500m and 4x400m relays.

Events lined up for day two are 3 000m for Under-16 girls and boys, Under-17 girls and the Under-20 girls, the 5 000m race is for Under-17 boys and Under-20 boys while the athletes will also battle for supremacy in triple jump, discus, javelin, shot-put, 100m hurdles, 200m and medley relays for the Under-17 and Under 20 age-groups. Chikomwe said the competition is important because that is where the future athletes would come from.

“We hope that the competition will be of very high standard because we want to see athletes who have participated in this competition representing the country in future,” he said.