County Championships
The weekend of 13th – 14th May saw the County Championships take place and the BRAT Juniors were out in force, (despite it being the weekend before GCSE’s and A’ Levels), with 111 entries for Warwickshire and 2 for Worcestershire! Whilst the older athletes took part in individual events, the Under 11 Boys and Girls competed in a Quadrathon – a combined event comprising of a 75m sprint, long jump, howler throw and 600m race. For many of the U11 athletes this was their first competition and every single competitor gave maximum effort with lots of PBs to show for it! The boys’ event took place on the Saturday with 4 BRAT entrants across a field of 18. After some very close races and huge long jump PBs, the event finished with a fantastic first place for Elliot Jones and second place for Charlie Keenan. The girls’…
Racing in Taiwan
James Drakeford
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…
BRAT Women Teams at Midlands 6-Stage Road Relays
BRAT women had a fantastic day of racing at the Midlands 6-Stage Road Relays.
BRAT Success at the Midlands Road Relays
BRAT team have great success at the 12 stage relays.
BRAT Juniors Represent Birmingham at the Regional Sportshall Final!
Following on from our attendance in the league matches over the last few months we were delighted to have 10 BRAT athletes selected to represent Team Birmingham at the regional final on Sunday 19th March. There was a fantastic atmosphere in North Solihull Sports Centre as 4 teams from across the wider West Midlands region came together in the regional final – Birmingham, Herefordshire & Worcestershire, Shropshire and Warwickshire The day kicked off with the Under 11s events and BRAT representation came from Elliot Jones and Kai Macmillan in the Birmingham boys team. There was plenty of action in the track events, with some very close races including some new events that did not form part of the league meetings – well done Kai for tackling the Over/Under relay without any prior knowledge of what it involved! On the field events, there were jumps, throws and balancing all taking place.…
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…
Good luck to BRAT juniors in upcoming national XC champs!
The junior cross-country league season was completed in February, but the biggest events of the XC season are yet to come. There were a number of county/regional races that took place over December and January, attracting the best athletes from Birmingham and the surrounding area. As a result of outstanding performances in these regional championships, we have had a number of athletes selected for the inter-counties XC championships and the English Schools XC championships. In both of these events, athletes will represent their county in a national level competition. Make no mistake about it, attaining county selection is a major achievements, so we’d like to congratulate the following athletes on their selection and give them a big “good luck” ahead of their upcoming races: Inter Counties XC Champs – Saturday March 11th – Prestwold Hall: U13G: Amira Emery U15B: Jack Price U15G: Alba Smith-Pena U17M: Dylan Teasdale, George Astbury, Morgan…
Spring Road Relays Sign-up
The Spring Road Relay’s are coming up and we are looking for people to sign up, this is one of biggest events in the BRAT calendar and a great chance to meet people from across the club. It is on our doorstep so we want to put out a strong showing. When: Saturday 1st April Where: Sutton Park, Birmingham Who: Everyone! Please sign up below, everyone is welcome to get involved! Please contact the following to enter: Women’s’ team manager: Helen PikeSign up for the Senior Women’s Team here. Men’s’ team manager: Dan RobinsonSign up for the Senior Men’s Team here.
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…
Men’s XC – Warley Woods
Warley Woods was the place to be……
Men’s Cross Country – mid season update
Amazingly we are already half way through the Cross Country season and a lot has been happening, with loads of BRATs turning out for the team (46 so far). The Midland XC relays at Wolverhampton were the opener to the season. We arrived with 4 senior teams and a Masters team trying to better last year’s Bronze medal at this event. James Drakeford ran the first and notoriously competitive first leg and gave us a solid start handing over in 9th place to Adam Peacock whose storming run brought us up to 3rd place. Dan Robinson held us in 3rd and opened the gap over 4th place Tipton by a few more seconds. JP Stolberg started the final leg 58 seconds behind 2nd place Rugby & Northampton and closed to within 8 seconds at the finish, just running out of time to overtake. So in the end we had to…