A new Napier sprinting revelation is hoping to take big steps towards the world junior athletics championships with qualifying times in Brisbane this weekend.

Just turned 17 and from the “sprint factory” of Napier Boys’ High School, Rylan Noome, who already has a national age group 100 metres record to his name, is the lone Hawke’s Bay competitor in the New Zealand Secondary Schools Athletics Association under-18 team at the Australian junior track and field championships.

Almost simultaneously, now senior Hawke’s Bay athletes Georgia Hulls, specialising at 200m, and Geordie Beamish, specialising at 5000m, were on Friday named in the New Zealand team for the 2023 World Track and Field Championships in Budapest in August, each having also first been selected for New Zealand at World Championships last year.

Noome’s assignments for the weekend are what would be personal bests of 21.48sec in the 200 metres on Saturday and 10.54sec in the 100 metres on Sunday, times he hopes will put him in the fast lane towards a shot at the 2024 world junior (under-20) track and field championships.

His personal bests are 21.96sec for the 200 metres at the Capital Classic at Wellington’s Newtown Park in February, and a North Island secondary schools championships record 10.73seconds at Massey, Palmerston North, on April 1-2.

He had already run a 10.73sec 100 metres on his way to winning the Under 18 sprints double at the New Zealand championships at Newtown Park on March 2-3, a time that would have equalled the national under-17 record but for being wind-assisted outside the allowable limits.

Speaking to Hawke’s Bay Today after arriving in Brisbane, he said conditions were “nice and hot and perfect”, thus ideal to go to another level - although, while they’re the last outings of the season there will be more opportunities next season.

The youngster’s rise hasn’t surprised school coach and Napier Boys’ High School deputy principal Bruce Smith, who, with well over 20 years at the faculty has detected the “sprint factory” developing in recent years, with the school claiming several honours in the 100-200m area and in relays.

Noome seems much the product of this, having come from Westshore and Napier intermediate schools with no track and field interest of note and just wanting to hook on to the school’s rugby conveyor belt.

In his first year at the school he did some athletics but wasn’t quick enough to make the East Coast North Island team for the North Island championships.

“I originally started as a rugby player going into NBHS all the way up until Year 10,” he said. “Then at the school athletics day I was selected to run at the [2021] East Coast North Island champs.

“I continued to play rugby for that year and it wasn’t until summer of 2021 in Year 11 that I officially took up the sport. So I’ve only really been doing it as my main sport for the past year and a half.”

A big year and a half, for he’s already on his second trip to Queensland in a New Zealand team, having last year placed third in the 200m, second in the 4x100m relay and fourth in the 100m in his age group at the Oceania championships in Mackay.

Smith says in the last six years Napier Boys’ High has been producing some of the fastest sprinters in the country, which happens to have been an era of some of the widest development of international track and field runners, jumpers and throwers in New Zealand sporting history.

The era started with Toby Archer and Ben Allan in 2017, joined by Josh Adegoke and Wesley Akeripa and these boys became the dominant force in New Zealand schools sprinting for the next three years.

All four made national finals in different events and Adegoke became the national junior 100 and 200 champion in Dunedin in 2018.

He, Archer and Allan were then named in a national sprint and relay squad, and joined together to run second in the senior boys 4 x100 relay at the schools nationals in Dunedin, and the following year in 2019 win the event.

In 2020 the 100m and 200m runners were joined by a group of what Smith calls “really tough men” in the form of 400m runners Archie Hargrave, Kairon Pimm and Raymond O’Rourke - in 2020 in Tauranga all three making semifinals and Pimm reaching the final. They were joined by 1500m runner Ollie Marshall to finish second in the 4x400m relay.

Smith said the era could have ended there but new speedsters joined the team in Ryan Shotter, Liam Kilby, Logan Wood and Noome all “signed up to train hard and aim to win national titles”.

They ran the national championships in 2020 and 2021, after the schools championships were cancelled because of the global pandemic, and proved up to the class.

Shotter won the under-18 boys 100m and Noome placed second in the 200m, the pair combining with Kilby and Wood to win their age group’s national 4x100m relay final, beating all of the full provincial teams.

The team were recognised as the Junior Team of the Year at the Hawke’s Bay Sports Awards.

The resurrection of the New Zealand secondary schools championships in December saw Noome winning the senior 200m, which Smith says was “an amazing feat from a Year 12 student who was only 16 years old.”

The school also claimed the relay title.