It was an evening of records and personal bests at the quickfire twilight track and field meeting at the Caledonian Ground last night.
Heading the bill was Myrtle Rough (Hill City-University), who set a second middle-distance national age-group record inside a week when she clocked 3min 45.66sec for the 800m.
Just last Saturday, Rough established a record for women 75-79 in the 1500m.
Hamish Mears (Hill City-University) highlighted the rise of a number of promising junior athletes, establishing an Otago record of 45.31m in the men's under-14 discus.
Mears, despite suffering the effects of a suspected broken knuckle in his throwing hand, eclipsed the 2004 mark set by Kieran Moffat for the 1.25kg discus by 16cm.
Mikayla Thorn (Taieri) featured in junior women's competition establishing a personal-best mark to win the women's under-18 triple jump with a distance of 10.14m.
It was a somewhat nervous start for Thorn, who overstepped at her first two attempts but adjusted her run-up for the remaining four to hold out a strong challenge from clubmate Hannah Ashton, who finished second in the grade with 9.74m.
The two went head to head again in the high jump competition soon after.
Although the two cleared the same height of 1.40m, in testing conditions, it was Thorn who took the honours because she cleared the height at her first attempt, while Ashton cleared on her second.
A year-11 pupil at St Hilda's Collegiate, Thorn (16) is the Otago under-16 secondary schools high jump champion and appears to be an athlete to watch in the future.
Sam Bremer (Hill City-University) took his opportunity over the final 500m to win the 3000m in a personal-best time of 8min 43.79sec.
Bremer (20), a second-year physics and maths student, was using the 3000m as an opportunity to bank some distance work in preparation to concentrate on his specialist 800m and 1500m events.
Bremer was involved in a three-way battle with clubmate Oli Chignell and Southland's Jordan Rackham in the early stages, but with 1000m to go Chignell upped the ante, which resulted in only Bremer managing to hold on to the pace turned on by Chignell.
Then, with a little over a lap remaining, Bremer took charge, leaving Chignell to run on for second place in 8min 50.57sec, with Rackham holding third in 9min 1.20sec.
Jonah Smith (Caversham) was the best of the rest in a talented field. He also clocked a personal-best time of 9min 16.92sec to finish fourth.
Christina Ashton (Taieri) was a feature of the sprint events, winning the 100m in 12.73sec and 60m in 8.20sec.
Matthew Ogle (Hill City-University) impressed with his run to win the 800m in 2min 5.44sec in what were demanding conditions.
Shortly afterwards, Ogle anchored a winning 4x100m relay team also made up of Andrew Smith, Wilson Mitchell and Jason Palmer.
