The recent Heart of England competition at Stourport was a day of miracles. Firstly, the weekend began and was punctuated by torrential downpours. Alas, those competing on the Saturday at the Mason Trophy may have got pretty wet! Not only did we manage to escape the rain, but the sprinters also enjoyed a home straight tailwind, it NEVER happens. I imagine the back straight wasn’t quite so kind!
After our absolute demolition of the opposition in the first match back in April, where we won by 350 points, I decided to shuffle the team around. We had a large number of athletes that hadn’t competed in the league before and quite a lot that hadn’t ever competed on the track before. Big pressure, well done guys. I was therefore a bit shocked and, I have to admit, a bit worried when some of the other teams arrived on coaches, unfurled their tents and banners and spread themselves out on the home straight. It looked like the other teams in the league had awoken from their apparent winter hibernation. Unlike the previous meeting in April, races were busy, teams fielded many more athletes and there was generally a massive upturn in the standard across all age groups.
But, as it turns out, we did actually run away with it again! I think that this is largely down to us fielding 2 athletes in the vast majority of events, in all age groups, in addition to some quality standout performances. Whilst it may seem easy to just throw athletes into events without having practised them, this is not our general ethos. All of our athletes had practised their events in advance. We were prepared. This is, as ever, a testament to our fantastic coaches that make themselves available to coach an array of events on an array of training days. As a team manager, it’s pleasing to see all our athletes enjoying themselves. We still had the most athletes and most supporters, and without a doubt, we made the most noise. Good job, both athletes and parents.
On to the results:
As you can see, we won all but one of the age groups and we won overall by over 250 points. What does this mean for us as a club? Well, we’re currently in division 3. The top 2 teams will be promoted into division 2. We have one more league meeting (Corby – Sunday 31st July), and that will hopefully be where we secure our promotion. Obviously, i’m already planning for another promotion next season, so, with all of your help and support, we’ll be in (and winning) the premier division the year after that!
As much as I wanted to spectate on everyone, I was running around for a lot of the day and only managed to spectate on a handful of races and events. Lots of discus throwers making their discus debuts and throwing very well. Thora Thomson and Alice McKinnon throwing in excess of 13m on their first outing with 3rd in the A and 1st in the B respectively. Other notable performances on the day were from Dan Tyler in the 600m (relentless from gun to tape), James Longworth in the 800m (strong under pressure in the home straight to take the win), Tim Siebert making his club debut with a 26.2s 200m to win the B race (also winning the B discus), Louis Wakelam-Sloan for jumping in at the last minute to double up and do the 400m & 200m (56.3s & 25.3s), Nathaniel Walker still knocking on the door of 6m in the long jump (5.90m this time around). Anna Newman with a strong 2.02 in the u11s 600m. A new PB by over 10 seconds in the u13g 800m for Macayla Drewett. Debutant Oumou Sall in the u13g long jump with a 3.92m into a strong headwind to take 2nd in the A competition. New PB for Bonheur Tshibola in the u17 80m hurdles to take an impressive win in a club record time of 12.5s. A long overdue PB for Isla O’Connor in the 100m and an impressive club record jump of 5.38m for Lily Smith in the u17 long jump.
Also, a special mention to the u15 girls and in particular Alba & Molly as you were put in events at the very last minute due to last minute absences, great job guys.
I’ll be sending out an e-mail around the 10th of July to ask for availability for the next and final league meeting of the season. Hopefully you can all make yourselves available for what promises to be another amazing BRAT junior outing.
The full results are now available on PowerOf10 and you can view them here: https://www.thepowerof10.info/results/results.aspx?meetingid=452966
Well done all involved, coaches and athletes alike. Amazing results.