Mitre 10 Regional Sports Park will be at full capacity this weekend with eight sport codes making maximum use of the indoor and outdoor facilities.

Mitre 10 Sports Park acting chief executive Ryan Hambleton says the weekend will be one of the busiest in over a decade with both community sport and high-performance sport events taking place.

This includes the Hawke’s Bay Regional Aquatic Centre Powered by PAK’nSAVE Hastings hosting the finals weekend of the New Zealand Short Course Swimming Championships through to a wide range of community sport events across the Park.

“The Sports Park and Hawke’s Bay Community Fitness Centre Trust will be showcasing it’s wide range of facilities and will be at full capacity and in all its glory with the sport fields being used for community sport and representative rugby while the swimming nationals is a huge event on its own.”

The Swimming New Zealand Short Course Championships is the largest swimming event on the swimming calendar with both age group and open categories and will feature some of New Zealand’s best swimmers such as Erika Fairweather and Cameron Leslie.

Fairweather is one of the world’s fastest 400 metre swimmers placing third in the 2023 World Aquatic Championships two weeks ago with a sub-four minute swim, making her just the fifth-ever woman to go under the barrier.

Leslie won multiple medals at the Para Swimming World Championships including gold in the 50m backstroke, silvers in the 50m freestyle and the 100m freestyle.

The Hawke’s Bay Tui women’s rugby team is taking on Canterbury on Saturday on the main field with six Under6 girls teams playing the curtain raisers.

The Rugby League Hawke’s Bay club season is also underway while community levels of netball, hockey, football, and rugby will also take place.

Ryan says Sports Park staff and contractors have been busy preparing for the weekend to ensure participants and supporters have a great experience.

He says the PAK’nSave Hastings netball centre has recently had the courts swept and court lines have been repainted.

Additional work will take place in the coming weeks with the fencing outside the pavilion to be lowered to improve the spectator experience with work expected to commence in the coming weeks.

Parking will be at a premium and Ryan says Māori wardens will be providing traffic management support on Saturday.

“We will be doing our best to make it easy for everyone visiting Mitre10 Park to get in and out smoothly, but we are asking visitors to be patient and to be mindful of an increase in the number of people, particularly young people on site”.

Additional carparking outside the newly opened Rodney Green Foundation Indoor Centre is also currently under construction and expected to be completed by the end of August.

Events on at Mitre10 Sports Park

• NZ Short Course Swimming Champs (7:00am – 12:15pm & 3:35pm – 9:20pm)
• U6 Girls Rugby Curtain Raiser for Tui game
• Tui vs Canterbury (2:05pm kick off)
• Rugby League Senior Men (1:00pm – 6:00pm)
• Netball, Club and SS (8:00am – 4:00pm)
• Hockey, Club and School (8:00am – 6:00pm)
• Junior Football (9:00am – 11:00am)
• Junior Rugby (9:00am – 12:00pm)

Article added: Thursday 10 August 2023