Thank you to everyone who despite the bad weather managed to make the long journey up the M1 to Mansfield for the last YDL UAG meeting for this season. Especially the parents some of whom endured total journey times for the day of over five hours, the club officials who spent most of the day in the cold and wet and the athletes who all pulled together to produce some courageous performances in challenging conditions.
Some of my memories of the day were of the resilience of our officials during the combined mens and womens Triple Jump which continued for nearly one a half hours in pouring rain. Steve Cherry without waterproofs continuing to smile whilst getting soaked raking the pit, Anna and Coops who quickly and efficiently coped with numerous swops of the boards. Shannon on take off, Maddie with the brollie and Mike who seemed to be inspiring the West Notts female athletes to continue to push that bit further for the impossible PB in the conditions! To Andy still smiling as he tried to dry out and salvage his sodden track duty sheets and to our timekeeper Doug whose face was barely visible as the best prepared person in his wet weather gear.
Jake was the bravest athlete of the day who despite suffering a quad injury in the 100m was still determined to get a throw in with the javelin for the team, and finished with a very commendable 25m off a short run up in slippery and poor throwing conditions. I am sure that everyone will send their best wishes to him for a quick recovery and also to Jess Cherry who was unfortunate to suffer an ankle injury during the first round of the Triple Jump.
On the track Emily stormed home to win the U20 400m in style, (sorry I have not seen the results yet and did not get the time.) Then filling in for Drew who was unable to run the U17 200m she really dug in to pass the leading athlete from Tamworth on a saturated home straight to finish in a winning time of 26.5s. A time which would be a fine county standard on a fine day, but considering the pouring rain and how slippery and wet the track was the time was amazing. Seb won the 400m in style and Luke cruised round to victory in the 3000m. Rebecca sailed to victory in the 300m hurdles before the worse of the weather set in and then later in the day with the two inside lines becoming water logged the sprint hurdles were moved to lanes three to eight when Paige was in fine form winning the 75m hurdles in a time near to her PB. Ben was rewarded with a new PB in the 200m and Will in the 100m
In the field the High Jumpers decided to avoid the 'cold bath' route on the landing mat and opted for the highest scissor kicks of the day which were both duly won by Seb and Rebecca. Before the bad weather really set in Matt got a new PB of over 5m in the Long Jump (sorry I didn't get the exact distance,) Michael coasted to victory with a throw over 52m in the Hammer and Jess Cherry threw 10.10m to win the U20 women's shot. After an arduous journey of three hours Charlie unfortunately missed his Shot Put by minutes but then finished the day with a solid throw for second place in the U17 Discus.
The above is just a brief summary of the events that I managed to witness between officiating and so I am sorry to those that I missed seeing compete consequently whose performances I have been unable to comment on.
When we left they were still totalling up the overall points from the day but as in previous meetings Tamworth appeared to have a commanding lead and it was looking like Sutton Coldfield were going to just pip us for second place by one point. As soon as I receive the full results from West Notts I will forward a copy to you all.
Once again I would like to say a heart felt thank you to all of you for all your help and support throughout the four YDL UAG league meetings this summer without which it would not have been possible to put out a combine Banbury and Bicester team.
With Best Wishes
Felicity
