Congratulations to the St Catherine’s Senior School Track and Field Team who last week qualified through to the preliminary round of GSV competition to advance to the Division 1 Championships. This is the third year in a row St Catherine’s will compete in this event and it is shaping up as an exciting competition as the school attempts to back up its 3rd place from GSV Cross Country earlier in the year.

St Catherine’s competed extremely well at the preliminary carnival, placing first overall for the Population Cup, and finishing top three in all age categories. Individual highlights included Olivia Nigido-Scott (Year 7) and Elodie Ferrali (Year 8) breaking long-standing GSV Championship records in the Year 7 A Grade Shot Put and Year 8 B Grade 100m respectively. Olivia threw an incredible shotput of 10.97m and Elodie raced down the track in a time on 13.35 to break the records.

Other highlights of the day included Track & Field Co-Captain, Ingrid Crossing (Year 12) winning the Long, Triple and High Jump crowns in the field and the Year 11 4x100m of Camilla Broome (Year 11), Juliet Grant (Year 11), Isabelle Dann (Year 11) and Stephanie Ferrali (Year 11), who off the back of a fighting finish by Stephanie came from behind to win the event in a climatic lunge at the line.

The Coaches Award most certainly goes to the ever improving Harriette Dryden (Year 10), who jumped a monster jump of 4.79m in the Year 10 A Long Jump. This was the biggest jump by a St Catherine’s student on the day and a just reward for the effort Harriette has put in over many seasons.

St Catherine’s will now battle it out against the top eight schools in the GSV, including some traditional rivals Firbank Grammar, Melbourne Girls’ Grammar and Ruyton Girls’ Grammar for the GSV Championship crown. We thank the coaches for their ongoing hard work with the team and look forward to the athletes continued improvement.

Good luck team!