Coach wins big at awards
Dedication to athletics at St Peter’s School has earned Ange Russek the title of Coach of the Year.
It was announced at the Hamilton City Hawks Athletics Awards earlier this month.
Russek comes from a netball coaching background, but her older sister competed in athletics as they were growing up so she had always been around the sport.
She became more involved in the sport with her daughter Arianna Lord, who is now at Yale University with an academic and athletics scholarship, started competing at school.
She has worked at St Peter’s for six years and helped build the athletics programme.
‘‘It’s been a great progression. When I first got involved, we used to only take about four students to nationals,’’ she said.
But at the last national event, 24 St Peter’s students attended and Charli Miller, Conor McGiven and Lauren Henry qualified for the Oceania competition.
‘‘It’s really rewarding when I work with them individually, we set goals and targets together, and then to see them get the results, it’s great.
‘‘There are always measurable improvements every time they compete, whether it’s setting a personal goal or trying a new race tactic,’’ Russek said.
She specialises in middle dis- tance runners.
‘‘We try to take a holistic approach too, so there are other strength conditioning exercises and we do an aqua session once a week which can be for recovery or low impact exercise,’’ she said.
‘‘And we help them with their nutrition, because teenagers are busy and they need to find a balance between school and their training.’’
In April next year, some of the students will be going to America to witness track and field events over there.
‘‘It’s like going to a rugby game here, the stands are absolutely full.’’
They will be visiting New York, Boston and Philadelphia on a personal development trip.