Barden Park has hosted hundreds of the Central West's best young athletes across the weekend, with athletes from over 17 different centres travelling to compete in the Western Zone Championships.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The event, that serves as a qualified for the Zone 3 Championships in February, saw a number of local athletics stars find success across the hundreds of events.
The attendance numbers speak particularly well for the strength of athletics in the regions, according to Little Athletic's Mick Gardiner, because there was a lot of concern about weather conditions in the lead up.
READ ALSO:
"There was very good representation and good numbers," Gardiner said.
"We thought that the weather might have played a bit of havoc with us with the dust and the smoke, but it turned out well and we were able to run the full program."
"It was definitely a good result for the region."
The qualifying selection process means that the six top placed athletes from Saturday and Sunday's events will move on to February's Zone 3 Athletics Championships, which will also be held in Barden Park.
Six athletes from each event at the Western Ranges Athletics Championships set to be held this weekend in Sydney will also qualify for the Zone 3 competition.
"I think we'll end up with quite a few that progress through other than that, though," Gardiner said.
"We've got those top six from this zone, the western ranges but we've also got the four best performing outside of that and quite a few will be coming from this area."
While strong results were recorded across the board, Coonabarbran's Dylan Power was the standout, breaking a record that's stood for the past decade in the Boys under 17s High Jump, besting the region's best recorded attempt of 1.7m set in 2010 by 15 centimetres.
State athletics representative Amy Barton backed up her strong recent performance in Sydney to break the under 12 girls shot put record that was set last year, putting seven centimetres further than the previous best set by team mate Xanthie Chatfield last year.
Gardiner puts the strength of the results down to the organisation's efforts to expand coaching opportunities in the regions.
"We've been working over the last couple of years to get coaches out into the regions and it shows here in the results, even in the school carnivals, the gap between the regional and city kids is closing quite quickly."
"There's less opportunity out here for elite athletics, which is just a fact of the travel times involved that hinder it, but ideally we'll see good results and that'll give those kids a chance to make it to the academies."
The Zone 3 Championships are expected to take place at Barden Park in February.