Nottingham AC ‘Spring Spruce’ Open Meeting
Saturday 2nd April 2016
13 year old Ben Copley is another of Kingston’s promising young athletes, who is learning his trade in coach Dave Bennett’s specialist throws group. He has been with the club since 2014 and in 2015 he enjoyed his first full track & field season, in the blue and gold vest.
He made tremendous progress throughout last year, where he was competing in the under 13 age category. On his debut appearance at the County track & field Championships, he was crowned the shot putt champion, and he took the silver medals in both the discus and javelin competitions. He was selected to represent the club in the National Youth Development League fixtures in Northern Premier 2, where he put in a series of impressive performances. Last August he travelled up to the north east of England to make his debut appearance at his first major championship meeting, the Northern Track & field Championships, which were being staged at the new Middlesbrough Sports Village. Two outstanding performances saw him collect two gold medals, and he returned home as the new shot and discus champion of Northern England.
His last appearance of the 2015season was at the Southport Waterloo ‘Open Meeting’ at Litherland, where he won the shot, discus and javelin competitions, setting new PB’s in all three disciplines, which moved him up the UK rankings in all of them, and at the end of his season he sat proudly at No. 2 UK in Javelin, No. 3 UK Discus and No. 8 UK Shot.
The 2016 track & field season brought a move up in age group to the under 15’s, and Ben’s first outing of 2016 came at the Nottingham Athletic Clubs ‘Spring Spruce Open Meeting’ on Saturday the 2nd of April, where he chose to compete in the javelin and the discus throws.
He won both of the competitions. In the discus throw he set a big new PB of 35.91m, which saw him achieve the qualification standard for this coming July’s English Schools Championships at Gateshead. One of his key targets for the new season was achieved in his very first outing, and to put the icing on the cake the throw placed him at No. 1 in the UK rankings. His victory in the javelin throw was sealed with another new PB of 41.64m, which placed him No. 5 in the UK javelin rankings.
