Back home at last…
Never mind ‘football coming home’, athletics finally found its way back home for the BRAT team on Sunday 20th June as we hosted the first senior league match of the season – the first league match of any kind since August 2019 and our first home meeting since 2013!
The rain just about kept off for us as teams from Birchfield, Royal Sutton Coldfield, Solihull and Bromsgrove descended upon the university track where a small army of BRAT volunteers had helped to make sure everything was ready on time.
On a day of ‘firsts’ BRAT had a number of winners; Jenny Scott (great to see Jenny back with a winning double in the Discus A and Javelin B), Adam Peacock (800 A), Lewis Carr (800 B), Becki Timmings (3000 A), Lucie Tait-Harris (3000 B), Khari Mitchell-Lewis (110 hurdles A), Dan Hindle (High jump A), Eva Gunn (400 B) and Alex Clegg (a hat-trick of wins in the Javelin A, Pole Vault A and Shot Putt A).
Making their debuts for the team were Becki, Lucie, Adam, Lewis, Charles Harvey, Karl Welborn and Paul Jolliffe (who made the rookie error of standing too close to the team manager when he’s looking for a relay team)!
Also making their debuts for the club were a number of our under 17s; Maisie Scamp, Lillian Smith, Keira Valentine, Ines Villalobos-Finegan, Poppy Close and Zac Humphries – all of these guys have been with the club since they were 9/10 years of age so it was fantastic to see them finally come through the ranks to represent the senior team, and just goes to show the value of having such a good youth system. The final member of the youth academy to make her debut was Nicole Walters, who summed up the BRAT team spirit by finishing the hurdles race despite having injured her back with two hurdles to go and crashing through the last hurdle as she could not take off – brilliant effort Nicole.
As there is no promotion or relegation at stake this year the end result doesn’t really matter, but just for the record we finished second, just 11 points behind Birchfield so well done to everyone on the track.
Finally, a special mention the ‘small army’ of volunteers. We couldn’t of done it without you, thank you for your time and efforts, especially Julie Smith for inputting all the results, Richard Hindle who was with us for the duration, our specialists Alison and Ron for keeping things moving and to our appointed Covid officer Chris Davy, or ‘Mr Covid’ as we now have to call him!
The next match is at Solihull on Sunday 11th July.
Nigel Clegg
Track & Field Team Manager
Photos courtesy of Toby Gosnall
