SAL – Bournemouth Sunday May 20th

Report from Mike Robbins:

There were smiles all round as Newbury AC travelled back up the A34 following a fantastic team performance in their latest Southern Athletics League match at Bournemouth on Sunday. Newbury finished in second place with 182 points, behind the host club (237), but narrowly ahead of Hillingdon AC (180) and City of Plymouth, Erme Valley & Tavistock (172) in a hard fought contest. With exam season wiping out a significant number of athletes, those who could make it were stretched to their absolute limits, so it really was a great team effort to squeeze out every point possible to take the runner up spot.

As we’ve become accustomed to recently, the female throwers achieved the most success on the day. Charlotte Payne continued her fine early season form in the hammer to smash the senior club record with a mighty throw of 56.08m, which incredibly, was only good enough for second place in the A string competition. Helen Broadbridge wasn’t ready to let her club record go without a fight though, throwing just 2cm shy of her previous best to comfortably win the B string. Charlotte and Helen went on to take three more wins and a second place between them in the shot put and discus.

Newbury also had a strong day in the pole vault. Dan Tuttle cleared 3m for the first time in his career to win the men’s A string, while Jenny O’Connor also increased her PB to 2.25m to win the ladies equivalent.

Inspired by his daughter, Ian Payne achieved two new PBs with 8.07m in the shot put and 26.46m in the discus, while Lilly Gohara did the same in the 100m and 100m hurdles with times of 13.8s and 18.4s. Callum O’Neill made a great debut in the blue vest of Newbury, finishing strongly in the 3000m to dip under nine minutes (beating a Commonwealth Games athlete in the process), before picking up vital team points with second place in the steeplechase. Another debutant in the senior team was V55 Anne Stewart-Power, showing it’s never too late to get into track racing with a 20:19 5000m clocking.

There were further PBs for Lawrence Baker in the triple jump (11.57m), Laurence Bu-Rashid in the 100m (12.1s), Matt Green in the 1500m (4:23.4), Emma Downie in the 400m (67.5s) and Rebecca Downie in the 400m hurdles (86.2s).

However, this day was less about PBs and more about picking up points for the team. With just 13 male and 14 female athletes there was plenty of doubling or tripling (or even more!) of events to fill all but two of the 72 scoring positions. With Newbury yo-yoing between third and fourth place each time the scores were read out on the loud speaker, the match result came down to a decider in the relays. The final event of the day saw all four clubs hand over to their anchor leg 4x400m relay runner at the same time, ensuring a nail biting finish. A long day of competition meant that club captain Mike Robbins could only bring the baton home in fourth place, but the point gave Newbury just what they needed to seal a fantastic and unexpected second place in the match. This one really was a huge team effort and every athlete should be very proud of the result.