Club finishes athletics season on a high

The last weekend of the athletics track and field season ended with medal-winning performances by athletes from Stevenage and North Herts Athletic Club.

Saturday saw 13 club members take part in a Come and Throw It competition at Watford. All the athletes recorded personal best performances in one or more of the throws. Under-13 athlete Max Price recorded 34.37m in the discus to go second in the national rankings, under-15 Max Schopp threw 30.82m, David Spicer improved his shot putt to 9.30m while Siobhan Rapacchi and Kate McRoy both set new bests in the javelin with 22.70m and 18.60m respectively.

Other athletes taking part were Jared Shreeve, Bethany Harley, Lauren Aldridge, Bethanay Dean, Martha Huggins, Melissa Doran, Sarah and Laura Feely.

Saturday saw athletes competing at the Biggleswade Open. Under-17 athlete Kashif Jones cleared 1.90m in the high jump for second, and under-11 girl Abigail Pickard won the 80m, 600m and long jump. Matthew Mardle, Kirsty Bateman-Foley and Alisha Levy competed in the javelin event, throwing 34.99m, 24.68m and 22.79m respectively. Also competing were Jack Gladwin (3,000m), and Aimee Jones (100m and 200m).

Sixteen athletes were at the Eastern Athletic Association Combined Events Championships on Sunday at Peterborough.

The club had a clean sweep in the U13 Minithons winning both girls and boys competitions. Bethany Harley set PBs for both the high jump and the shot putt (1.41m and 7.41m) and won the 70m hurdles in 13.61s.

In the boys competition Max Price won by 10 points with James Pearson from Thurrock second and team mate William Cartledge in third. William recorded new best performances in the discus (17.56m) and the 100m (14.3s).

Behind Harley in the girls competition Alisha Levy was fourth in the high jump, Lauren Aldridge finished ninth in the high jump and hurdles, Rebecca Beddall was 10th in the high jump and javelin and Charlie Duke and Bethanay Dean were joint 15th out of the 22 starters.

The under-15 boys pentathlons saw Max Schopp winning with 2,210 points and David Spicer scoring 2092. In the under-15 girls pentathlons Melissa Doran finished 10th with 2,106 points, a new PB, Rebecca Pickard as 14th with 2,030 points, also a new best. Martha Huggins and Kate Wright finished 20th and 25th overall. Sam Poulton, in the Senior Men’s Pentathlon, finished fifth with 2,255 points.