Several of our Junior Harriers headed North to Monkton Stadium last week, for the first meeting of this season’s North East Grand Prix series. As usual it was an evening fixture, with each event taking place with a mixture of age groups and gender. Here’s how things went….
1500m
Battling his way round against the senior athletes was Adam Russell. Now in his first year at Under 20, he pushed hard and had a terrific race finishing with a new PB of 4:09.7 to take 11th in the Heat, and the 5th U20M to cross the line. Heat 2 saw Zara Jones (No. 304 below) take to the track, and it was soon evident that the excellent form she’s shown already this season was set to continue; and so it did! A super run brought Zara home in 5:00.97 in 4th place overall, and 1st place for the U15 Girls – smashing her previous PB by over 12 seconds and beating plenty of U17’s on the way! In Heat 3, it was great to see Under 15, Harry Lyons back on the track. Apart the 5k at Croft (on a different sort of track!) this was his first T&F event this year; and what a top performance it was. He took 1st place in the Heat and yet another PB tumbled with an excellent time of 4:29.27. In the same Heat, Under 13, Hugo Douglas-Reeves (No. 320 below) was competing in his first ever 1500m. He paced himself really well and was very happy with his debut at this distance. He set himself a new best of 5:15.13 and he is looking forward to his next attempt and hopefully a new PB! Some top performances from our four 1500m runners tonight, well done to you all.
150m
Time for some sprinting, and a great opportunity for a couple of our sprinters to have another crack at this non-standard distance. Actually, it was two athletes from our Junior ranks who we consider to be ‘all-rounders’ – Under 13, Lottie Graves (No. 64 below) and the more experienced Charlotte Rutter, who is now in her first year as an Under 20. For Lottie, it was only the second time she’d competed at 150m and she was easily the youngest in her heat. She ran really well against the older athletes and was frustratingly just a fraction outside her PB with a time of 21.33s. For Charlotte, this was her first outing this year so it was great to see her back in action again. Her last 150m race was back in 2016 as an Under 13 so it wasn’t a surprise when she smashed her previous best with a new PB of 19.76s. Fabulous sprinting girls, well done!
Shot Put
Lottie and Charlotte were back again in the Shot Put, along with our dedicated thrower, Lily Thompson who’s now in her first year at Under 17. Not surprisingly it was Lily who lead the way with a cracking throw of 9.83m. She hasn’t quite reached her top form yet but that was enough to take 3rd place in the FU17’s. At Under 20, Charlotte has now moved up to a 4k shot so this was her first attempt at this new weight. As expected, she still produced some excellent throws setting a new best of 8.98m, and the top FU20 of the night. Finally, more excellent throwing from Lottie and a new PB of 6.35m, smashing her previous best by 33cm to take 3rd place in the FU13’s. Well done girls, keep up the great work!
Javelin
Lily was back for her second event of the evening in the Javelin. It’s been a couple of years since she’s competed in this discipline and that was at the same NEGP event back in April 2019! No surprise then that she smashed her PB with a new best of 22.66m; a huge increase of well over 4m to take 4th place in the FU17 category. Fantastic effort, Lily, well done!
As usual, an excellent overall performance from out Junior Harriers, well done to you all…. we’re looking forward to the next NEGP meeting on May 19th; if you fancy giving it a go entries are open now at https://northeastmastersathletics.weebly.com/negp2021.html
Full results from this event can be viewed at http://harrierleague.com/tandf/northeastgrandprix2021/meeting1/results.htm