General News
5 March, 2025
Plucky Zayde targets championship success
By GARY WALSH ON HIS first day at Little Athletics Bendigo in 2023, aged 10, Zayde Williams threw a javelin more than 21 metres. “I picked it up and wanted to see how far I could throw it,” Zayde said. “I just threw it like a tennis ball.”...
By GARY WALSH
ON HIS first day at Little Athletics Bendigo in 2023, aged 10, Zayde Williams threw a javelin more than 21 metres.
“I picked it up and wanted to see how far I could throw it,” Zayde said. “I just threw it like a tennis ball.”
With an unconventional grip, and with no training whatsoever, the Inglewood youngster hurled the javelin further than anyone his age had ever done at the centre.
Now, he’s preparing for his second appearance at the March state championships in Melbourne, entered in the javelin and high jump.
All this with an auto-immune disease that has restricted his growth, and a history of asthma.
Zayde, now 11, has eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE), an allergic condition that causes inflammation of the oesophagus, with symptoms including difficulty swallowing, chest pain and heartburn.
Zayde’s mother, Amanda Divola, said he had been unwell a lot when he was younger but since taking up athletics had seen a major reduction in his asthma symptoms.
He joined Little Athletics because he was fast, but also because his small stature made it hard to play contact sports such as football.
Javelin became a passion after that first throw, and high jump followed soon after.
At 10, Zayde cleared 1.23 metres – despite being only 130cm tall.
This year he has cleared 1.36 metres, just three centimetres less than his current height.
The Marong Primary School student was selected for the state titles in his first year of Little Aths after throwing 22.93 metres in the javelin at the Northern Central Region championships and winning a medal in high jump.
Zayde finished 15th in the state in high jump last year, clearing 1.20 metres, but fouled out in the javelin.
He admitted to being overawed to be competing at state level, with more than 500 other children.
But this year, having trained specifically for his two events, Zayde has higher expectations, and even has his eye on nationals when he becomes eligible next year.
For the moment he has a borrowed javelin at home and is throwing it around the family property and guessing at the distances.
“I’m going to get a tape measure,” he said, ever the perfectionist.