Warwickshire & Worcestershire County XC Champs- Solihull Riding Club Saturday 14th December
Write-up by: Nick Price (Junior XC Team Manager & Endurance Lead Coach) Some excellent performances by the juniors at the County XC Champs at the new testing course at the Solihull Riding Club. It was good for the juniors to experience racing on pasture / farm land rather than parks! The Champs is one of the qualifying races for the Inter Counties XC Champs at Nottingham on 8th March with 8 athletes from Warwickshire and Worcestershire being selected! Overall we achieved 4 podium medals and 3 team medals during the day which was a great team effort! U11G – Nya ran away with the race and looked comfortable winning her 2nd County XC Champs in a row! Isabelle 21, Veronica 25. Team 4th U11B- Another excellent performance by the U11s with a great 2nd team place again!! George 5, Thomas 11, Zachary 13, Jeevan 19, William 20, Walter 21, Sebastian…
Sportshall Is Back!
Sportshall Athletics. If there was ever a form of organized chaos in athletics. This is it. The degree to which it is organized or chaotic varies from match to match and from club to club, but I’d like to think that BRAT veer slightly towards the organized side of things. It’s somewhat surprising, given the number of new faces we see taking part, not knowing quite what to expect. In Matt’s absence, I had the please of giving out the numbers. This gave a me a great opportunity to assess the general feeling of our athletes. I’d say that there were a lot of nerves on show, so congratulations to all of you that felt nervous at the start but conquered those nerves to put in some great performances. Our u15g team won overall and our u15b were pipped to first place by a handful of points. Out of our…
Heart of England League – Banbury – 23rd June 2024
the Heart of England league. Rewind back to this time 2 years ago and we were in division 3. Since then, we have had 2 consecutive seasons of promotion. My expectation was that we would hold our own and finish comfortably around the middle of the division.
County Champs 2024
There was fierce competition last weekend at the Athletics County Championships (both Warwickshire and Worcestershire). The competition for the most sunburnt spectator was marginally less intense than the competition for the most vociferous! Yes, we were blessed with an uncharacteristically hot weekend which was tempered slightly by a cool swirling breeze. I’m not sure if it was just me, but it did seem as though there was a headwind on both the home straight and the back straight, but we really shouldn’t complain given how unseasonably warm it was! As junior team manager, I take great pleasure in seeing our athletes apply what they have learnt in training to competition. I know that all the coaches share this view. Training and competition are different. You can not replicate the adrenaline rush you feel in a race when someone creeps on to your shoulder or the euphoria you feel when you…
West Mids Junior Cross Country League – Walsall – 22nd October 2023
A great start to the season with the club in 4th place overall with 49 athletes competing across the age groups. Star team of the day was the U11 Boys in 3rd place with the U17W 7th, U17M 6th, U11G 6th, U15B 8th, U13G 8th, U13B 4th, U15G 7th so excellent results across the age groups. Individually we had some great performances with U11G Nya 5th, U13B Ollie 6th, U11B Charlie 9th with top ten finishers. But it does not show the true picture of the performance with lots of athletes moving up an age group and still achieving high placings. Then there is the individual improvements of athletes which all adds up towards that 4th overall team on the day! Remember that if you finish in 50th that is still 151 points for the club so all your efforts add to the overall total. Thank you again for the…
BRAT Juniors Secure Promotion as League Winners!
Let’s be honest, it’s not the most enjoyable drive to Corby. The dull grey clouds over the motorway did little to inspire enthusiasm. As we arrived in the stand, the weather felt more like that of an early April warm-up meeting as opposed to a league competition in the middle of summer! As Europe basks in a heat-wave where people are advised to not go out and to keep their curtains closed, summer in Corby felt more like a game-of-thrones ‘north of the wall’ escapade. A strong and persistent head wind on the home straight put pay to the majority of our sprinter’s chances of PBs. If you achieved a PB at the weekend, then you should be very pleased with yourself. The dark skies were occasionally pierced with downpours and the odd bit of sunshine, perhaps this is as good as it gets in Corby??? On that backdrop, seeing…
The BRAT Juniors’ Winning Run Continues In Banbury!
Let’s set the scene. Meeting 1 in Stourport in June. The BRAT junior team delivered a crushing victory, finishing over 200 points clear of second place Banbury. Let’s not forget, we were only promoted to this division last year, so many of the existing clubs have no idea who we are and how strong our athletes are! It must have been a shock for the other teams, but with Banbury hosting this recent meeting, it was the perfect opportunity for them to put out their strongest possible team, and they did not disappoint! To complicate matters even more, this meeting unfortunately clashed with the Inter County Schools’ Championships (Mason Trophy) where we had a lot of athletes competing. In their absence, it was left to others to step up and make their performances count! What’s more…..Oxfordshire don’t compete in the Mason Trophy, so Banbury didn’t lose any athletes for this…
Heart of England League – A Crushing Victory For BRAT Juniors
It’s that time of the year again. Our first BRAT junior track & field league outing…and you know what that means….an opportunity for me to put together my usual protracted write-up for the website. As always, I start with my usual caveat that I can’t mention everyone, but rest assured, I have a close eye on all of you both during the event itself and via the results. I will be chatting with all our athletes at some point, hopefully! Taking a step back from results and performances for the moment, there are a few things that underpin our (fantastic) results: Officials (timekeepers, starters, track judges, field event helpers). I’m starting with officials as it our #1 most important point. In all honestly, officials are one of our most limiting factors when it comes to developing as a club. To host our own events, we need many more. A big…
Astbury claims Midland Champs gold in strong BRAT juniors’ performance
Whereas the senior event in Sutton Park is a team based relay, the juniors run an individual 5k, the Midland 5k Championship. This is the best runners from across the entire midlands region competing in a championship race. Needless to say, it is a high quality event that attracts the best athletes. Several BRAT juniors took part on what is an extremely challenging course featuring some leg-sapping hills. George Astbury pulled clear in a final sprint on the hill to the finish line to capture his first major medal. A time of 16:15 gave him a 1 second victory in an extremely competitive u17s race. He also took a huge chunk off his 5k PB, which is even more impressive given the nature of the course. In the same race, Morgan Hill and Dylan Teasdale finished 7th and 18th respectively to bring home a bronze medal for the team. Another…
Sportshall Athletics – Birmingham League Final Standings
Right, i’m not doing a super long write-up this time. Just to say, i’m fairly sure that we were the loudest team at Sportshall over the three events. My voice is somewhat coming back, but certainly a level of croakiness that reflects how kermitted I was to shouting our athletes on. Because I love writing about me (who better?!), I was impressed that I knew all our athletes’ names. Fellow junior athletes, alas, your generic “come on BRAT” shouts languish behind my name specific shouts! I’m only mentioning this latter point as we had 72 athletes in total across the 3 events, so perhaps it is forgivable that not everyone knows absolutely everyone in the team! So, how did we do? U11 boys – 3rd U13 boys – 2nd U11 girls – 2nd U13 girls – 3rd U15 boys – 3rd U15 girls – 4th The full results can be…
A Return to the Birmingham Sportshall League
It’s been 3 years since we had a Sportshall League, the last competition was February 2020! With that in mind, it was great to get back to what I casually refer to as “organised chaos” (it over ran the time slot by an hour, so i’m going to go with simply “chaos” for this weekend’s event!) Anyway, it’s a fantastic opportunity for our juniors, particularly the younger juniors, to get some competition experience over what is often a long cold winter. Many of the athletes have never competed for the club before, so it’s great to see them getting involved. I have a number of coaches to thank for picking the BRAT team, but the general principle we went with was enjoyment and inclusivity. What was particularly pleasing as a team manager was successfully collecting all the numbers in at the end of the event. Just kidding (although I still…
Junior XC – County Champs
Now, I may not win many prizes, but the award for the most waffle filled write-up goes to…. I am writing this short report from my perspective as the BRAT junior team manager/coordinator/head coach….or whatever my role is! For me personally, it was the first time in attending a cross-country county championships in….well…decades! Back when I was a junior, up in Lancashire, I remember doing the county champs and it felt like such a step up in quality as compared to the rest of the league races. This felt the same in the race last Saturday. Smaller fields across all age groups battled a challenging course; traversing narrow sections on energy sapped legs from earlier hills. Add to that the sub-zero temperatures and icy patches and you have a recipe for some tired junior legs! I interviewed one of the junior athletes (also known as a chat with my son,…