Alex brings home medal from UK school games
The UK school games is one of the highlights of the U17 athletics calender with the top 5 from each event in England selected alongside athletes from the other home countries to take part in an 8 team competition held over 2 days in Loughborough at the weekend.
nPart of a multi-sport format, it is effectively an U17 Olympics with the young athletes staying on campus with their teammates from other sports and enjoying a lavish opening ceremony.
nWADAC had no fewer than 6 young athletes taking part with the field events held in glorious islolation on the Friday and the track events on the Saturday. Coverage is provided live on YouTube for the track & field events as well as many other sports.
nErin McBriar (coach Martin McBriar) competing in a Northern Irish vest was first of the WADAC athletes to take part and did so in some style adding nearly a metre to her pb by throwing 34.30m for 7th place. Amy Wall (coach Andy Fisher) was up next finishing 6th in a stellar long jump field with a best leap of 5.35m. Completing the field eventers on the Friday, Charlie Elford-Pond (coach Eric Davidson) was 3rd in the hammer.
nThe track races took part on the Saturday with the first event being the 300m hurdles in which Arabella Wilson (coach Andy Fisher) took the silver medal. This was one of 3 medals (one of each colour) for Bella on the day as she was also part of the winning 4 x 100m relay team and the 4 x 300m relay team that came 3rd. Not a dry eye in the house up next as Alex Beck who has been on the verge of medals at all the national events this season finally broke his duck by taking bronze in the 400m going sub 50 secs to do so. Superbly coached by Mark Upton, Alex has had a breakthrough season and this was a great way to finish it. Lastly Harry Wilson (coach Nick Anderson) was extremely unlucky to finish 4th in a bizarre 1500m race which saw the competitors almost walking the first 800m which led to the inevitable 700m sprint and a subsequent pile up which saw Harry on the floor. He recovered for 4th place which was a fine effort given the fall.