Newsletter October 2018
Well the winter is nearly upon us and that is the season for the track and field athletes to work on their strength and endurance, also for endurance runners to get muddy and wet in cross country and younger athletes to get involved in Sportshall.
Call for help
On Saturday 10th November our club is responsible for providing marshals and registration at the Sussex Cross-country league at Stanmer Park. Please spare some time to help out as the more people there are the better time everyone has.
Registration
We need people from 10.30am till 1.00pm and/or 1.00pm till 2.30pm
Marshals
Meet from 11.00am 1st race 12.00am till 1.00pm and/or from 12.30pm till 3.30pm. The last race is at 2.35pm
CAN YOU HELP? Please emailpeterwitcomb@hotmail.co.uk/matthews2000@live.co.uk
Tom Pink Relays
There were many medals, some fantastic performances and lots of on Sunday 14th October at the annual trip to the North London indoor stadium, to compete against eight other teams, from across the South of England. Once again we had a superb trip up and the team performed admirably.
The meeting was set up with a bequest from the parents of Tom Pink, a young athlete who was tragically killed in an accident en route to training in the early 1970’s. Relay races include trying to beat the times of some of our greatest distance runners with “Keeping up with Paula”, “Chasing Kelly” and “Chasing Mo.” On the field Sportshall activities include; weight throw for height, caber toss, shot put, standing long and triple jump, highland steps and soft javelin.
The two age groups – under 13 and under 11 took part in four relay events and we had six wins out of the eight finals in the end.
The Under 13, 3 x 500m relay teams (Sam, Dillon and Adam 4:27.2 & Mollie, Nicole and Pearl – 4:42.3) were both triumphant with a U11 team of Oliver, Myles and Louis (4:50.7) also gaining the bronze medal.
The U13 Sprint relays brought back a Gold for the boys and a Silver for the girls. These are exciting races with changeovers every 100m of a 1500m distance and each of the five athletes running three times.
The boy’s team of Dillon, Noah, Rhys, Max and Sam enjoyed a healthy five seconds win by the end with 3:39.5 over 1500m.
The girls team of Amber, Sophie, Millie, Frankie and Pearl were just behind a well-drilled winning team and reinforced the 4 x 100m relays they performed in the summer.
The U11 girls won both their events – the sprint relay with five athletes running four legs of 50m even more exciting and frantic than the U13 events. Their time of 2:39.7 for 1000m was four seconds ahead of the runners up and the B team just missed the 3rd place. The winning team was Stella, Elodie, Daisy, Connie and Julieana.
The frenzy of this relay is matched in ‘Under/Over’ relay where the four athletes run 100m of the track each – jumping hurdles and going through a tunnel – the girls once again won (1:13.1) with the boys team gaining 3rd place (1:17.5) after earlier crashing out in the sprint relay final when an athlete collided with an official.
While each of the sexes is competing on the track and other sex is competing on the field with a series of jump and throw events. We placed in the top three in 20 events, here with a couple of stand-out performances from:
• Stella Kalman – 1st in U11 Standing Long Jump with 2.16 (a PB)
• Adam Mehew – a distance runner – 1st in U-13 Weight for Height (5m at 3kg)
• Dillon Moss – great range in U-13 Standing Triple Jump (3rd 5.89m) and Shot (3rd 5.64m) – multi-talented!
• Tommy Grey – 2nd in U-11 Standing Long Jump with 1m 88 (PB)
• Max Willamse – double medallist with 2nd in U-13 Standing Triple Jump (6.14) and 3rd in SLJ (2.14)
• Sam Southgate – Gold with an impressive 69 in the U-13 Highland Steps
• Amber Purcell and Sophie Wilkinson placed 2nd and 3rd in U-13 girls Standing Long Jump
• Elodie Bradley gained a 2nd in U-11 Highland Steps (74) and a 3rd in SLJ (2.09)
• Clean sweep in U-13 Weight for Distance – Noah Mason 1st with 14.5m and Theo Piercy 2nd 13.5m
Other medals were gained by Oliver Holt, Frankie D’Cruz, Joe Hall, Charlotte Macintyre, Libby Russell and Sidney Aparo.
Well over half of the team returned to Sussex with medals and plaques, a great day out and much thanks to Dave Roberts and the other parents for their help on the day and to the Brighton & Hove Supporters Club for providing the coach.
Richard Carter – U11 coach & team manager
Goodwood Relays
On an usually mild day over 50 Brighton youngsters competed at Goodwood in the Sussex Cross Country Relays Championships, where we returned home with six team medals and two individual medals.
A few years ago the teams almost picked themselves however, such is the depth we have now in all our age groups that team selection is not as easy as it used to be. This is great news for when the league starts in November when there will be straight races.
There were many excellent performances and we had several youngsters moving up from the U11 who were running for the club for the 1st time.
In the U13 girls race our ‘A’ team of Dulcie, Rosie and Mollie came 2nd and our ‘B’ team of Maddie, Sophie and Tilly won the bronze medals, with Dulcie running the 3rd fastest leg of the day. Our ‘C’ team of Ella, Esme and Flo came 7th.
In the U13 boys race the ‘A’ team of Sam, Jude (in his first year in the age group) and Adam won the bronze medals and our ‘B’ team of William, Ruben and Eddie came 12th.
In the U15 girls race the ‘A’ team of Poppy, Ella and Rebecca gained another bronze medal with our ‘B’ team of Emily, Eadie and Tatum not far behind in 4th place.
For the U15 boys the ‘A’ team led of by Harvey who ran the 2nd fastest leg, Archie who ran the 4th fastest leg and Will, like the U13 girls came away with the silver medals.
The ‘B’ team of George, Henry and Barney – who running his first race for the club – came 5th and the ‘C’ team of Josh, Cosmo and Tomas came 9th.
In the U17 Women’s race the team of Lois, Alex and Gracie won the silver medal.
In the U17 Men’s race our ‘B’ team of Tom, Baxter and Adam were just a few seconds behind the 3rd team in 4th and our ‘A’ team of Patrick, Joe and Henry not far behind in 6th.
Well done to Polly, Macy, Joe, Rory, Kit, Freddie, Freddie-Ray, Lacey, Ruby, Bertie and Allanah who competed in incomplete teams.
Well done also to Tom Matthews who won the U11 boys race and to everyone who competed.
Pete Witcomb
And finally…Can you Help?
We are always need people to help with the running of the club, so if you think there is anything you can help with please contact Mike:mikeellismartin@gmail.com
Don’t forget to send your news items and reports to:brightonreport@gmail.com