After three years as overall Champions on Sunday 6th September with a very young team, eleven of whom will be in this age group next year, we were beaten into second place by our great rivals Crawley. There were many excellent performances and personal bests.
Special mention to Alex Pert who won both of his events the Discus and Javelin. Joshua Hartnett, a new member, competing for the first time for the club, came second in the shot before storming to victory in the 150m in 19.1, which was just outside of the league record. Club record holder at 800m Adam Firsht, led from start to finish to win the 600m in 1.42 in impressive style.For the girls Lois Dooley outsprinted the Sussex champion Eloise Nicoll to take off 16 seconds off her personal best to win the 1000m in 3:18.3 seconds which takes her to seventh in the UK at this distance. Another winner Elizabeth Korczak threw the Javelin 31.13m which places her sixth in the national rankings.
There were also several B string winners including; Ben Neale Javelin, Emma Carter Discus, Astrid Blackledge 1000m and a PB for Partrick Connolly in 1000m. Although not winners we had several other personal bests; Joshua Pay 600m, Tai Tewsbury high jump, Joseph Noble high jump, Nathan Mcconnell shot, Roxy Jones hurdles and Anya Dawson high jump. James Mullineux set two personal bests in the discus and long jump, Blossom Campbell and Ella Monk set bests over 75m and Lacey Fowler ducked under two minutes for the first time in the 600m.
Full results can be found on Po10 and TOPS websites and on the Sussex AA website.
Finally after eight enjoyable years in which time the U13 team has won four finals I will be standing down as the team manager next summer. I will still be around to support and I will continue to coach my group and will manage the cross country team this winter.