End of season Junior track competition night

Sept 2008

There were almost 60 junior Harriers at the 4^th track and field competition evening held last Monday at Millfield track. Top junior athletes overall on the night were Tim Stevenson (Year 4), Jessica Pate (Year 5), Dan Reason (Year 6) and Chris Hawkes (Year 7), with several others achieving personal bests inspired no doubt by the recent Olympic and Paralympic Games. All athletes tried really hard and thanks to the officials and parents that helped on the night.

In the 100m sprints, pick of the races for the older athletes was the Year 8 girls race where Josephine Douglas and Roo Black were adjudged to have dead heated for 1st place with 14.5 seconds. In the matching Year 8 boy’s race, Henry Brown recorded the fastest time for the night with his 12.3 which if ratified would have been a personal best by 0.2 of a second. Henry is currently ranked in 55^th place in the region with another year to go in this u15 age group.

For the younger athletes, James Whitlock’s 11.9 for the 75m for the Year 5 boys and 13.4 by Jessica Pate in the girl’s version were both excellent times, whilst Tim Stevenson’s 12.4 for the Year 4 race promises much for the future.

In the longer sprint races over 200m, Year 10 Craig Bateman’s 26.4 was the fastest of the evening whilst Ted Ade-Martins with his 30.8 timing in the Year 7 race shows that his recent sprint training on a Monday evening is beginning to pay off.

In the middle distance events Oliver Fox’s 5.10 for the end of the evening 1500m was a good return after his competing in earlier events, and the sub-3 clocking in the 800m by Danny Reason and Danny Kennedy, both Year 6s, augur well for the future.

In the Long jump, Tim Stevenson just edged out George Whitlock with their 3.15m and 3.13m distances in the Year 4 and 5 competition, with Jessica Pate leading the way for the girls with 2.96m. For the older athletes, Harry Reindy jumped out to 4.25m and Roo Black attempted to go better than her recent best with her 4.08m here. Roo is currently in 11^th place on the regional rankings with her 4.31m from the recent South West League match.

In the javelin there was some great competition with Katy Chinnock best for the Year 6 girls with 11.8m and Sam Chaddock best for the Year 6 boys with 20.87m, just ahead of Year 7 Rowan Harding who threw 19.96m.

The Harriers have several teams entered in all ages from u’13s through to veteran men at this coming weekend’s South of England Road Relays event with team managers and athletes travelling on both days of these championships to the Aldershot Arena. The Combined teams with Yeovil Olympiads now switch to competing in the Harrier’s traditional Royal Blue and Yellow vest after a summer season competing in the orange vest of the Olympiads.