North East Youth Development League Meet 4 - Monkton

[20-Jul-2014]

 

The 2014 NEYDL season finished in warm sunshine at Jarrow with the Blyth/Alnwick team looking to finish the season off in style.

 

The sole Blyth U13 was Eleanor Gurney making her debut in the league, and she performed superbly with 2nd place in the 70m hurdles, 6th in the Long jump and 5th in the 100m

 

We did not have any U15 girls on this occasion but the U17 ladies put in some great performances. Alice Dungworth stormed to another victory in the 100m, and followed it up with another 1st place in the 300m in a new PB (43.2s). She couldn’t quite make it a hat-trick of wins, but 2nd place in the long jump was a great result. Erin Scott finished 2nd in the 1500m, 1st in the ‘B’ long jump, and won the triple jump in a new PB (7.79m) to finish with a big haul of points. Ella Wood was making her first appearance in the league and ran a swift 30.0s to finish 2nd in the 200m, and 49.6s for 3rd in the 300m ‘B’ race.

Middle-distance specialist Josh Fiddaman was representing the U13 boys, and picked up some great points with 1st in the 100m ‘B’ race in a new PB (14.1s). A comfortable win in the 1500m maintained Josh’s 100% winning record on track this year. Finally, Josh finished 2nd in the Javelin ‘B’ event.

 

For the U15 boys we have Cameron Williams, Adam Swalwell and Connor Marshall all in action. Cameron finished 2nd in the 100m, and comfortably won the high jump despite being some way below his PB. Adam finished 1st in the 100m ‘B’ race, although his participation in the rest of the meeting was curtailed by the effects of sunburn from his recent trip to Italy! Connor Marshall ran in an exciting 1500m race and showed great confidence to lead from the front in a 3 way battle. Connor eventually slipped to third, and was marginally outside his PB but showed great maturity with his race.

 

Representing the U17 men were James Young and Adam Wright. James was the sole competitor in the 800m and had the firm aim of setting an outright club record, having equalled it the previous weekend. It was always going to be tough running alone, but James stormed around the first lap in an aggressive 59s, and then gave every last ounce of energy in the home straight to finish in 2:04.5, breaking Chris Lillico’s club record by nearly a second. Well done James, very well deserved. Adam Wright finished 2nd in the 100m, fading slightly at the end after a lightning start. Adam was again 2nd in the 200m in a close finish, and 24.4s was just outside his PB. However the best was yet to come from Adam as in his first triple jump competition in a Blyth vest he hopped, stepped and jumped to a massive 12.32m. Not only did this win the competition by a huge margin, but also obliterated Craig Birch’s club record. A great achievement bearing in mind Adam’s inexperience at the event.

We managed to put out an U13B 4x100m team, which finished 3rd in a very close race. Alnwick’s youngsters also provided some excellent performances and the combined squad can all be proud of themselves. Despite a relatively small team, the high level of performance meant that we finished 4th out of 6 on the day, and have finished 5th in the final league table.

 

Bearing in mind the large number of juniors in the club, there is definitely potential for a far larger team next season which could push for promotion. Well done to all the athletes who have competed this year, everyone one of them has done BRC proud.

 

 

Daniel Njai