Cowra High School’s Taylor Garratt will be competing at the Australian All Schools Championships that run from December 2 to December 4 at the AIS Athletics Track in Canberra.

Taylor explained she was a competitor in both the Discus and Shot put but changed to the hammer throw after some coaching.

“I initially met my coach at the Western Athletics Competition and I was doing Shot Put and Discus then so he offered to give me some training,” she said.

“We started initially with shot put and discus but he said I was built like hammer throwers he’d coached before so I tried it and got alright at it and continued to do it.”

“He’s a high level Olympic coach who decided on a tree change and who was after some country kids to coach.”

Cowra High Schools Athletics coordinator Steve Johnstone said it was great for the school to have a student competing in a national competition.

“It’s great for the school, it’s good for the schools image and publicity, it’s good for Taylor and we’ve always acknowledged our athletes as well as our academic students for achieving so highly,” he said.

This will be the first time Cowra has been represented at a national athletics competition in more than10 years. 

“I think our last nationals competitor in athletics was Kirsty Tapscott and she was a triple jumper,” Mr Johnstone said. 

Throwing a three kilogram hammer in her age group, Taylor’s personal best throw sits at 47.32 meters however she is hoping to throw over 50 meters at the championships.

“I haven’t thrown my personal best this year but I’m hopping I can break 50 meters at this competition which I have been able to do at training over the last week I’ve thrown about 52 meters,” she said.

Some might think competing at a national level would be time consuming but Taylor disagrees and she wouldn’t want to be doing anything else.

“It’s a study break especially the training at home, I’ll study for an hour then do some weights or something. At the moment I do four throwing sessions and three weight sessions a week,” she said.

When it comes to competition Taylor isn’t to worried, and as she’s seen some competitors drop off she wants to encourage others to take part in athletics.

“There is (competition between throwers), the psychological game is hilarious the training people who train together at state will try and annoy everyone else,” she said.

“I just think athletics is so open, there’s so many different things you can do. If you’re a runner you can run, if you’re a thrower or more built person you can throw it’s a more all-round sport anyone can have a go.

While most people would be aiming for the Olympics, Taylor is thinking about short term goals.

“It’d be nice (to go to the Olympics) but we’ll see what happens, I’m just aiming for the Youth Commonwealth Games. I was discussing with my coach and I think that’s a good enough goal to go for after this competition,” she said.

“But a huge thanks to my coach and parents, coach especially he makes up all the hammers and everything, then mum and dad take me to training all the time.”