Herne Hill Harriers young athletes played a big part in enabling the Surrey and South London teams to qualify for the Aviva Sportshall national finals in the regional qualifiers at Crystal Palace and Burgess Hill. Competing against the best young athletes in London and the South of England three teams that contained Herne Hill Harriers young athletes qualified for the national finals to be held in Birmingham in April.
Competing at Burgess Hill, Sussex Jermaine Graham, Christopher Sinclair and Segun Babatola were in the Surrey U15 boys team that won their agegroup by nearly 100 points with Jermaine Graham winning the all rounder award on the day after winning the standing triple jump with 8.48m and coming third in the 2 lap and shot events. Christopher won a bronze medal in the standing long jump with 2.55m and Segun was second in the 4 lap race. Surrey also won the relay and paarlauf races.
Also competing for Surrey were Charlie Wilkinson, Brandon Wallace, Kishon Allen and Dennis Asante in the under 13 boys, Michaela Obijiaku and Kayane Cornwall in the under 15 girls and Denisha Marshall Brown and Brittany King in the under 13 girls, all the athletes won medals with all Surrey teams coming second in each agegroup and now have to wait to see if they qualified for Birmingham as best losing teams throughout the qualifiers.
At Crystal Palace the South London under 15 boys and girls team both qualified with Garfield Francis winning the top all rounder title in the boys. Both teams contained three athletes from Herne Hill Harriers : Reiss Cunningham-Ormonde, Nathaniel Jacques and Garfield in the boys and Noka Dosso, Rachel Madden and Kassa Sealey for the girls.
Elsewhere, on the indoor track, Jess Knight took the opportunity to enter the U20W 400m Open in Birmingham, winning the 400m in 57.34 sec. She felt strong and really positive in advance of next week’s National U20 Indoor Champs, where she feels she can go faster.
Steve Bosley/Sarwar Khan/James McDonald.