National Athletics

Amano hosted the ISAZ Provincial and National Athletics Meets on 30th May and the 14th of June 2014 at the Levy Mwanawasa Stadium in Ndola for the first time ever. The first event is a tournament in its own rite and also a qualifying meet for the nationals where the best four athletes in every discipline go to the National event to compete against the best four from Midlands area. The 40,000 seater stadium was a beautiful venue and is the only facility like it on the Copperbelt.

  Amano attended with a relatively small team of 28 students of which 23 qualified for events in the Nationals. There are some notable performances to mention here.
  Diana Shakwelele smashed the U16 girls 1500m national record by 18sec with 5min42s and set a new school record for High jump at 1.30m.
  Ethan Milner smashed the boys U16 800m national record by 9 seconds with 2min10s and also set a new school record for 200m at 24.31s.
  Fernulla Milner set a new school record (NSR) for U14 girls 1500m at 5min43s.
  Moses Wikelund set a NSR for U16 boys 100m by 200ths of a second making it in 11.87s.
  Kathleen Kaufman got the school record in U14 Girls 400m with 1min09secs and High Jump with 1.30m.
  Edwin Dingwall equalled the school record for U16 boys high jump at 1.50m.
  Natalya Yoro added 15cm to the school long jump record achieving 4.08m for 1st place for U14 girls.
  In the 4 x 400m relay U14 girls and U16 boys both set new school records.
  With 4 x 100m again the U14 girls knocked off 3 sec of the school record to come in with 1.00.50mins, the U16 boys record now is 49.10s and the U19 boys finished with a new school record of 47.87s.
  On top of this there were a number of first places:
Yannick Kalidas in U14 boys 400m, Edwin Dingwall U16 boys 400m, Msanivute Banda for U19 boys 800m and 1500m races. Diana Shakwelele won the U16 girls 200m and Joyce won U19 girls javelin.
Amano finished in 5th place overall out of 8 schools. This is good considering we failed to have two complete girls teams and so missed out heavily on relay points.

U16 400m boys Edwin Dingwall (in blue)

U19 100m girl Joyce Muteb (in blue)

The Nationals was another day of success for Amano students. Amano now has 5 national records within ISAZ, 3 being added this year. Amano finished 6th place in overall points amongst 17 schools. This comes to 4th place in overall medals at 21. So person for person Amano students prove to have quality if not numbers.

Natalya Yoro U14 javelin

Nkwali Mwetwa and Raymond Amborski U19 4 x 400m

Notable performances:
Kathleen beat her own PB in the 400 down to 1min07s (NSR) and silver in high jump at 1.30m.
Fernulla also beat her own school record to run 1500m in 5min36s (NSR).
U14 girls 4 x 100m relay improved to 1min00.32s (NSR).
Edwin set a new national record (+NSR) with 54.08s in U16 boys 400m and took gold in triple jump, 1 cm behind our school record.
Ethan set a new national record with 2min08.69s in U16 boys 800m.
Fungai Chanda set a NSR in U16 boys 1500m with 4min35.84s beating the old national record too but coming in 2nd place.
U16 boys 4 x 400m also broke the national record but again in second place so they have a NSR of 3min46.31s. They also set  the 4 x 100m school record of 48.18s.
Joyce Muteb put in great performances and got a NSR in U19 girls 200m with 28.19s in silver place.
Msanivute scored gold in U19 boys 1500m with 4min36.25s.

I am grateful to all the students for their hard work which reaps these rewards. As we continue with the athletics season I am sure more records will tumble on sports day at the end of term.
Well done.
Report by Mr S Grove