Herne Hill Harriers young athletes team put in a battling performance in their second Youth Development League match at Lee Valley to finish an excellent third in a good quality and extremely competitive match.
The team now lay in last place in the league with six points but still harbour chances of getting promoted as four of the teams have seven points and Bracknell are leading with eight points going into the final match on 18th July.
The team survived a desperate start with athletes no throwing, a faller and disqualification in the hurdles during the first half hour which led to the team being 20 points behind after only six of the fifty events and in such a tight match that was going to be a very difficult gap to close. However some superb performances in the 800ms in which the club scored 41 points out of a maximum of 48 closed the gap after the first two hours and from then on the places exchanged as only 80 points covered all six teams in the final scorers.
We had A string wins in the 800ms from Maisie Collis 2.28.31 in the U13 girls, Eimear Griffin 2.22.07 in the U15 girls and Turkay Kormkaz in the U15 boys backed up by second places from Oscar Millard in the U15 boys B string, Clarissia Nicholls in the U15 girls B string and Jacob Harrison in the U13 boys B string & third places from Toby Reynolds & Emily Kate Marchand in the U13s.
We were consistent in the high quality 100m sprints with B string wins from Michael Miller in the U15 boys 12.01, A string second places from Emmanuel Gray in the U13 boys in 13.92 & Monae Winston in the U13 girls 75m with 10.14 & third places in the U15 girls through Ciara Hussey and Angel Asare & Faith Price in the U13 girls 75m.
After two hours we were in close battle with Bedford and County, Crawley & Windsor for third place and places alternated throughout the afternoon. Our field events was the big difference between this match and match one as we had fewer poor events and kept picking up valuable points. Our star performer in the field was Alex Mawdsley who threw 47.34m and 11.44m to win the discus and shot well supported by newcomers Tiarnan Matthews & Sid Daniels in the B strings who were second and third. We scored well in the U15 boys javelin (Seb Fallowfield third in the U15 boys javelin & Oscar Millard winning the B string javelin).
Adam Hawkins winning the U15 boys long jump in a PB 5.38m, Thomas Fallowfield winning the B string U13 boys javelin in which Thomas Hawkins was third in the A string
In the girls field events Felicia Nwosu won the U15 girls discus in a PB of 25.21m & Britli Francis was second in the B string in 18.05m & Britli & Felicia were third in the shot. Bella Gibbon won the U15 girls high jump with 1.53m and in the U13 girls long jump Samara Innverity was third with 4.40m and Zay-Ann Guppy 2nd in 3.96m
We continued to score well in the longer sprints with Monae Winston winning the U13 girls 150m in 19.81 & Michaella Pottinger 21.22 second in the B string & in the U15 girls 200m Ciara Hussey was third in the U15 girls 200m in 26.73 & Angel Asare 2nd in the B string in 27.07, Michael Miller and Sid Daniels were third in the U15 boys 200m & Emmanuel Gray third in the U13 boys 200m.
We then surged again with the 1500ms where one of the highlights of the day was a dominant run by U15 boy Mohamed Mohamud who sliced six seconds off his PB winning by ten seconds with 4.13.57. We had a double A and B string win in the U13 girls 1200m through Lulu King & Rosie Hammond in 3.53.82 & 3.58.04 and Jaden Kenndy won the U13 boys 1500m in 4.41.64 in which Jacob Alley was second in the B string in 5.03.66. Eimear Griffin showed the spirit in the team by coming from last place down the home staight to win the U15 girls 300m in the final strides.