Trafford Medal Meeting 17 Apr

Easter Monday was not to be spent solely eating chocolate for many of our young athletes as they opted to test themselves in the bank holiday open meeting at Trafford.

Again, this was well attended with 19 athletes (that’s two more than last time!) representing the club across a variety of events. A personal highlight for me was standing at the start of the U13 girls 150m and hearing the organiser picking out Altrincham athletes for each race because there were “loads” of them.

Several athletes were making their track & field debut for the club. Naomi Conteh is a new U15 girl and put in some a very promising performances. Beth Robinson, Verity Charnley and Eva Bucknall have run in the cross country for us and performed very well in the U13 category, Beth even managing to win her 800m with a very impressive finish. In the U11s Carys Bucknall, Eleanor Nicholson and Sara Herceg-Millington also made impressive debuts.

The girls back for more of what they know best were Emma Simpson, Lucy Diss and Millie Pearce (U15), Esme Pearson, Grace Adams, Jade Buckley-Ratcliff and Orla Flynn (U13), Cerys Smith, Jessica Forrest and Thea Prattley (U11). For the boys we had Oskar Richardson (U13) and Dominic Gibson (U11).

That makes 29 different athletes that have attended these open meetings so far this year. To put this in some perspective, the equivalent figure after two of these events last year was 7.

The standard of these events is extremely high. People can’t expect to be near the front straight away, so we try to encourage focus on trying to set PBs rather than finishing position. These are some of the best events in which to achieve those.

Loads of PBs were set.  The highest number of PB improvements came from Dominic Gibson who bettered his previous performances in all three of his chosen events!  Some of the Altrincham athletes also came home with medals.  There were silvers for Jade Buckley-Ratcliff in the U13 high jump, Millie Pearce in the U15 1500m and Naomi Conteh in the U15 high jump.  There was one gold and that went to Jade Buckley-Ratcliff following a huge throw in the javelin.

Next up this Saturday is the first match in the Youth Development League, where we will we looking to set some momentum for the 2017 season.

Thank you,
Andrew

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