Junior Middle Distance catchup, May – July 2019
After a long and inexcusable absence, (although I could field a few, primarily the intrusion of a day job) the Junior Middle Distance reports are back. I will try to keep them up to date, albeit monthly. So, in an attempt to do a fast forward through May to July, here goes.
With many of the London Boroughs holding their sports meetings over the same week in May we had some interesting results from our Juniors, foremost of which were Lina Colas and Maddy Whitman, both winning their age group 1500 races in the Westminster Champs.
At the Middlesex County Championships in May, Lina again ran well in the U15G, finishing 2nd in a time of 5:12.99. Jago and Monty Juxon placed well in their U15B races, despite being in the lower age category, with Monty 6th in 2:17.18 in the 800m and Jago 7th in 4:51.07 in the 1500m.
The YDL meeting at Ware on 18th May saw Oliver Cunningham setting a new pb in the U13B in 2:7.3, with Micky Bradley Sanna competing for Belgrave for the first time in the same race, with a time of 2:57.7
Maddy Whitman turned out again on 2nd June in the Southern Counties U17G 3000m to place second in 10:37.32, before popping up again on 8th June to place third in the London Schools Intermediate Girls 3000m in 10:40. Maddy competes regularly for her school, the American School in London. This season she has set pb’s of 2:26 for the 800m, 4:48 at an ASL meeting and 10:20.20 over 3000m at yet another ASL meeting. In early June she placed first in both the 1500m and 3000m in Brussels at the International Schools Championships. Maddy capped off her season in the Southern League, competing for our Senior Ladies and securing 2nd place in the B 800m in 2:24.9 and 2nd in the A 1500m in 4:53, on a very windy day. And then she finished it all with the fastest Belgrave leg in the Women’s 4x400m.
Our third YDL meet of the season was a home match at Battersea, and we had some excellent performances and pb’s from our squad, the most notable being Oliver running 2:25.8 for 2nd in the U13 Boys 800m A race and Max running 2:31.1 to win the B race. Micky ran his first ever U13 Boys 1500m in 5:52.79 to finish 3rd and Lina ran a 5:19.36 in the U15 Girls 1500m.
Our final YDL meet at Tooting Bec saw the reappearance of Blaine Robinson, not as fit as he would have all liked, but nevertheless running a lung busting pb of 4:35.5 over 1500m to win by some distance in the U15 Boys race. In the U13 Girls 800m, first time racer Palmer Newson surprised us all (but not her) with a 3rd place 2:38.1. And in the U13 Boys 1500 metres we had Oliver running yet another pb in 4:59 dead, closely followed by Seb Cockerell in 5:07. Earlier that day we had another win from yet another first time racer, Lucas Ebert, with a 2:27.1 finish in the U13 Boys 800m. Lucas went to the front from the gun and stayed there, and a brave but tired Micky, racing boys two years older than him, secured a 2:55.2, gaining Belgrave yet more points. The Boys finished off the day in style, with Seb stepping up an age group to join Blaine in the U15 Boys 4 x 300m for 2nd place, and with Oliver going again in the U13 Boys 4 x 100m to grab yet more 2nd place points, along with team mates Jesse Fonda, Lucas Skeete and Omari Koroma.