North Yorkshire Schools Championships
York University, Saturday 9th June 2018
With organisational problems meaning that the Humberside Schools Championships are not being staged this year a number of Kingston Upon Hull athletes were grateful to be invited to compete as guests in the North Yorkshire Schools event in order to continue their pursuit of entry standards for the prestigious English Schools Championships to be staged at Birmingham’s Alexander Stadium – the venue for the 2022 Commonwealth Games – next month. A warm, still day greeted the local contingent together with some quality opposition from the host area.
A high standard intermediate girl’s high jump saw Kingston’s Alanah Thoresby produce a timely personal best of 1.63m – 4 cm in excess of her previous best – to be the first Humberside athlete of the day to collect an entry standard & to hopefully join her team mate & training partner Ellie Townsend in the county team for Birmingham. Ellie’s best clearance on the day was 1.55m however she already has a 1.63m jump under her belt from earlier in the season. If selection is confirmed it will be a return to the Midlands venue for Alanah having jumped there as a junior in the 2017 Championships while it will be a first experience of the event for Ellie.
Jodie Martin has started her season in tremendous fashion having run 3 successive personal bests over 800m in her only outings over the distance this year. Having already qualified for the England Athletics Age Group Championship in August Jodie was looking for a further 1.5 second improvement to make her English Schools track debut after having represented her county 3 times at the cross country equivalent. After running shoulder to shoulder with North Yorkshire’s Mena Scatchard for 700m of the intermediate girls event Jodie produced a superb last 100m to open up a decisive lead and cross the line in 2:15.0 – a full second inside the qualifying standard. A real bonus for Jodie was to come later when she found that the time broke the previous club record of 2:15.59 sec held by Jess Lonsdale since 2010.
Unluckiest athlete of the day was sprinter Daisy Logan. Only 0.15 sec away from the qualifying standard over 200m the 14 year old was clear of the field approaching the line only to suffer an extremely painful torn hamstring. Not only did this ruin her individual ambitions but also meant a late change to the line up in the junior girls 4 x 100m relay team where Daisy was due to run the 3rd leg. After two very promising training sessions together the squad were excited with the prospect of gaining qualification and were determined to overcome the setback of losing Daisy. Kingston’s Lauren McLean, best known as a hurdler and high jumper had already had a successful day, finishing 2nd in the 75m hurdles and winning the high jump and equalling her lifetime bests in both, and was drafted into the relay squad with only minutes to prepare. Running without even having met her team mates previously Lauren did a tremendous job and to the delight of all concerned helped the team record 52.0 sec – exactly the mark required. The celebrations which followed the announcement of the time were a mixture of relief & excitement and showed how much the result meant to the whole team who will now return to more work on their baton changing over the weeks leading up to the Championships.
Another Kingston winner on the day was hurdler Sam Croney. Taking a break from his GCSE studies was another to set a personal best when winning the intermediate boy’s 100m hurdles, recording a time of 14.8 sec. Unfortunately for Sam this didn’t quite reach the English Schools entry standard so he will be looking for further opportunities in the coming weeks prior to final selections being made.
Throwers Ben Copley and Holly Adams completed the Kingston contingent at the championships. Holly was in competition in the discus throw where she is ranked no. 1 in Yorkshire and no. 10 UK, and shot putt where she stands at 3 in Yorkshire and 11 UK. She won both of the events throwing a new PB of 29.47 m in the discus, an improvement of 38 cm. Her throw of 10.26 m in the shot gave her a second victory. UK No. 4 Ben Copley was the winner of the discus where he threw a new PB of 45.35 m, an improvement of 60 cm. The Yorkshire No. 1 notched up a second victory in the javelin, throwing another new PB of 54.24 metres, an improvement of 1.36m. Both Holly and Ben will be going to the ‘English Schools’ event where they can only compete in one event.
