TGS track star enjoys cross-country success

Talented Takapuna Grammar (TGS) runner Sascha Letica won the Auckland secondary school senior cross-country championships this month, ahead of this weekend’s national championships in Palmerston North.

Primarily a middle-distance runner, 16-yearold Sascha says the competition from around the country will be tough, but she is focused on doing her best.

“If that’s 12th or 20th, that’s okay.”

She says she got a lot of confidence to challenge the top order from her Auckland win at Lloyd Elsmore Park in Pakuranga. “It was a very muddy and technical course.”

The Bayswater resident won the prized 800m and 1500m Auckland Secondary Schools trackand-field double earlier in the year.

Sascha joined Takapuna Athletics Club as a 10-year-old, her interest sparked after learning about her father Jared’s athletics background.

“My dad is my coach. It’s pretty cool. He did triathlon and duathlon and steeplechase on the track.”

His focus has been on ensuring Sascha takes a balanced approach to racing, and she took to it early on, following a “little training programme” he put together for her.

Aged 11, she competed in a junior trans-Tasman meet and won a medal at an Auckland championship, but she says she wasn’t a standout competitor. “I was always all right, but it’s only been recently that I’ve had consistency and been getting times and results.”

This year, on top of her middle-distance and cross-country wins, she won an under-18 silver medal at the New Zealand Track and Field

Championships in March and another silver in the U20 New Zealand Road Mile championships held in Rotorua in May.

Sascha says “no way” to running longer distances on the track. She likes a variety of racing, although 1500m is her likely longerterm specialism. “I’m looking to get a US college scholarship.”

The aim is to further her education at the same time as her athletics career. “I don’t know what I want to study yet, but I want to be not just an athlete but a student-athlete,” she says.

Sascha is in Year 12 and taking the International Baccalaureate programme. She enjoys writing. “It’s not all running; I try to keep a balance in what I do,” she says. “It sounds so corny, but I do love to run – that sort of feeling when you’re flying along is so fun.”

Along with running training, she fits in swimming and gym work.

Taking a rounded approach, including staying healthy, is important to the father-daughter team. “Dad is big on not over-focusing,” says Sascha, who is the eldest of five children.

One of her two sisters, Nadia, who is in Year 9, has also run for TGS and was in a team with Sascha, and fellow senior Jodie Nash, that won a national three-person 1500m Secondary School Challenge Trophy in Hamilton in February.

But Nadia is more interested in rugby, Sascha says.

Step by step, Sascha says she is determined to explore her potential, with representing New Zealand in the back of her mind.

“The goal is to put on a black singlet.”

Briefs

Cop cover from Takapuna

Devonport community constable Glenda Peri is assigned to investigations for the next few months. Her Takapuna counterpart, Constable Brent Stewart, is covering the Devonport area as well as his own patch until Peri’s return in August. Police said another North Shore community constable would help in Devonport from late June.

Ireland Celebration

A priivate celebration of writer and poet Kevin Ireland’s life is planned at the Devonport RSA on 26 June. Ireland died late last month, aged 89.