Meet records for inter-school and other annually conducted meetings are designed to provide an ongoing interest and discussion points for event promotion.

But until Friday one Northern high schools mark had endured since 1976. For 41 years grade 7 and 8 female athletes from across the North had run the 1500 metres at NHSSA carnivals but none had challenged Lisa Gray’s time of 5:00.7.

The then 13-year-old Prospect High student was the youngest of four athletic sisters who made their mark on the Tasmanian running scene in the ’70s and ’80s. Not long after setting that record, Gray was the fastest under-age 800m runner in the country.

She was stunned to discover that her mark was still there but was delighted that another 13-year-old – Kings Meadows High’s Abbie Butler had claimed it.

Perhaps most noteworthy about Butler’s performance was that after the record had gone unrivalled for so long, she bettered it by nearly five seconds.

But there is an even more revealing statistic. Despite running in the youngest age group for secondary athletes, Butler’s time is the fastest recorded by a female athlete for 1500m in any inter-school competition for grades 7 to 10 this season and only one college athlete, multiple national medallist Ebony Webb, has run faster.

That fact, alongside the achievement of breaking such a history-defying record, may well underline Butler’s talent as a new kid on the block but it also raises a big question.

As it happens, the only NHSSA meet records remaining from last century are for middle distance events. A decent swag of independent schools marks of 800m and longer are also long standing.

So we ask it – across the board are Tasmanian secondary school aged children as fit as their equivalents of 20, 30 or 40 years ago?

An examination of the aerobic fitness of Tasmanian secondary schoolchildren would be interesting.

It may also be an explanatory factor in the declining numbers of Tasmanian boys being drafted by the AFL at a time when talent scouts are looking for those who can run all day well ahead of footballing skills.

Anecdotal evidence is concerning. Huge numbers of primary school athletes participate in inter-school cross-country but as the age group increases, the entry numbers fall dramatically.

Year 11 and 12 participation levels, even among the independent school population, have plummeted.

When they run on the track and times are measurable against the past, the depth comparison is disturbing.

But we should not be surprised. Daily fitness and much of what we once understood as physical education are less relevant and certainly not universally practised in Tasmanian secondary schools.

And it’s not the impact on performance levels in mainstream sport that ought to be raising the alarm for it can always do something about it through talent identification and individual programs.

But where both sport and the general community loses is through decreased participation in aerobic-based activities.

Sports become less relevant and viable but society faces huge costs – both personally and economically.

Australia’s obesity epidemic is not going away. It’s getting worse. 

The national cost of procedures like lap-band surgery and subsidising anti-cholesterol drugs alone is scary – let alone every other expenditure occasioned by an unfit population.

Keeping school-aged Australians as fit as they can be would be an amazing start to redressing the problem. 

It used to be something we accepted as a given when we walked or cycled to school and spent the term holiday breaks at camps or building forts in trees.

And yes, when we stayed back and did sport after school finished for the day.