Medal Success at a Sweltering Southern Championships.

It's congratulations to four of our members in coming up with gold winning performances in the South of England championships staged at the Melbourne Park Stadium.

Over 800 metres Jacob Hurrell took the under 20 men title with a time of 1m 51.68s thus confirming his Essex win gained in May. For Edward Hughes in the 400m hurdles this was his first championship race of the season, and his success came with a clocking of 54.71s - just outside his best of 54.54s from a Birmingham University meeting

At under 15 level Erin Kelly came up with a run some 23 seconds faster than when placing third in the Essex 3000 metres and now with 10m 14.34s there was the reward of first place. Away from the track and Alastair Brown keeps coming up with winning performances in championship events in the shot putt having already taken the South and England indoor titles. This time an effort of 17.04m was only marginally outside his best of 17.08m.

It was in the field events seeing three silver medals being won, Oliver Graham in the hammer throw for senior men reached 57.64m whilst in the women's event Helene Ingvaldsen also placed second with 58.41m. This later event also gave Charlotte Graham achieving a pb. With an effort of 42.26m

To the high jump and here another pb as Charlie Pyner (U20) cleared 1.95m. On the track Bradley Reed came away with second spot from the senior 110m hurdles whilst in the under 20`s 1500 metres Gregory Martin placed second in 3m56.71s with Harry Wright with a pb of 3m 58.13s finished in fifth place. Finally, there were two bronze medals - Sam Wright in the under 20 long jump with 6.94 metres and veteran Paul Grange third in the senior 800m in 1m 55.40s where he headed Luke Oliver and Jacob Alexander also going under the two minute time. Not all good performances come up in the top three places for Fred Ferman in the under 15`s 3000m brought his pb down to 9m 36.38s when placing fifth,  Hetty Harrison fourth in the under 17`s steeple-chase improved her time to 5m 30.43s and Charlotte Oliver who we mention above reached 38.65m with the discus notched up her second pb. Another to achieve two personal bests was Abigail Mcelroy with fourth place in the under 20`s 200 metres in 26.01s and then to the triple jump reaching 10.92 metres. Other athletes carrying our colours here saw Lily Frost 4th in the discus, under 20`s with 28.71s, Sienna Shipton 5th over 800m in 2m 18.98s and James Becker going through heats, semi-finals in both sprints. For the under 17`s 3000 metres Austin Kelly in seventh place with 9m 17.61s headed our Max Chivers, Daniel Pollard and Jacob Parrott.

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Report written by Roy Meadowcroft