Herne Hill Harriers’ young athletes made a promising start to the track and field season at the young athletes open meeting at Crystal Palace on 3 April with over 100 youngsters competing.
The young athletes produced a number of outstanding performances on the day, including a new club record in 800m in the under 13 girls’ age category.
Running what was her first 800m race for the club, Breagha Campbell set a new record of 2min 28sec, beating the previous club record by 2 seconds held by Gemma McDonald since 2003. Breagha won the National Schools biathlon championship for year 7 girls the week before. 
Former nationalist finalist, Zanson Plummer, had an excellent sprint double in the under 15 boys 100m and 200m in 11.62 and 23.77 and will be one of the challengers for National honours this summer. Young Harrier Frederick Afrifa also ran well coming third in the 100m and 200m.
Louis Keen showed the benefit of training during the winter with former international shot putter Mike Winch by winning the U17 men’s shot with a new personal best of 15.19m and in the Under 15 girls’ shot Tosin Babajide, fifth in last year’s English schools champs, won with an excellent 10.60m.
International athlete, Katie Snowden, won one of the feature races of the day, in the under 20 women’s Dave Clarke Mile race in 5.20.61 with Armelle Folkes a fine third.
Other event winners included Merhawi Yemane in the under 15 boys’ 1500m in 4.25.25, Izzy Lamport Went in the under 11 girls’ 600m, Sam Wattles in the under 13 boys’ long jump, Dejean Marshall Brown in the under 13 boys’ shot, Funto Fabunmi-Alade in the under 20 women’s 200m and Jerrell Clarke in the under 20 men’s long jump but throughout the day there were endless personal bests from the red & black hopped vests which showed great promise for the season ahead.
On 2 April, Glen Keegan, the Harriers’ ultra-distance runner, ran 63.5 miles in 12 hours in the Crawley 12 hour track race finishing in 7th place out of 21 runners. Glen is now ranked in the world top thirty in the 12 hour running event.