SAL #2

Southern Athletics League Match #2, Division 2 North East, Stevenage, 15.06.24

Thanks to Team Captains Lily Woolcock and Richard Macaulay for writing this report and to Simon Baker for pulling the results together.

“It was another glorious day for the Heathside track and field team on Saturday 15th June who went away to Stevenage for the second Southern Athletics League match following a sensational home victory at our first match at home in Finsbury Park last month. There was some stiff competition for this fixture, including the home club Stevenage and North Herts, who sat in 3rd place in the league at the start of the day, hot on our heels in 2nd alongside Harlow, Herts Phoenix, Central Park, and Victoria Park. After careful checking of the results, we are OVER THE MOON to say that WE WON the second fixture!!! This is an outstanding achievement and a big thank you to all athletes and coaches for the hard work training, everyone who got us points by volunteering and especially to the athletes who stepped up to the mark often last minute and out of specialism to maximise our points. Winning the league and promotion is within our sights!

1st London Heathside 249

2nd/3rd Harts Phoenix and Stevenage & North Herts 241

4th Harlow

5th Victoria Park & Tower Hamlets

6th Central Park

The day started somewhat inauspiciously with the weather in the morning and early afternoon being frankly miserable with a mixture of cold, wind and rain. The day was full of nervous excitement, fired up by Rich’s bus speech, with tight scores being read out across the day with Heathside in clear contention for the win with the tight gap getting bigger in our favour as the day went on! But as Heathside continued to rack up points throughout the day, our glory cut through the cloud cover, providing us with warm glorious sunshine for the latter part of the afternoon! This was only made possible by a number of people stepping in to fill events as far as possible picking up a multitude of points in place of clubs without full entries in both strings. The team really shone as examples of what SAL is all about and everyone’s attitude and determination was on point which led to the day’s success.

First track event of the day was the 400m hurdles and a massive kudos to Trey Corlis for stepping in very last minute to cover a late withdrawal and got a very credible 2nd place in A string, with Malakai wining the B string to get us off to a strong start! In the field, the first event was the men’s high jump that Prithvi (still nursing a knee niggle) won with a first time clearance of 1.73m and massive thanks to team stalwart Ivan Ross who literally jumped in at the last minute to do the B string! Trey later made his debut over the adult height sprint hurdles (despite being an U20), running superbly and comfortably winning by several seconds. Genevive Weston made the Heathside debut on the track with a well-executed 400m hurdles before going straight into the 800m with Lily Woolcock who won the A string, bringing in plenty of points in the first couple of events. The legend that is Lorna Stevenson made the field debut with a hammer throw following some parkrun tourism in Stevenage before going to greet Lennie after a faster than expected ultra! Thank you Lorna for still making the effort to compete for the team despite a busy day!!

Genevieve and Molly Harrison went on to fill 8 events each – covering this many events, even if they realised they had an event mid packed lunch, brought us in huge amounts of points and being able to compete against athletes in their specialism across such a number of events is extremely impressive. Between them, they covered 400mH, 400m, 800m, 100mH, 4x100m, 1500mSC, HJ, LJ, TJ, shot, discus and javelin. They also managed to teach Lily to pass a triple jump for the B string (even if Rich cheekily commented that 5.21m would have been acceptable in a straight long jump…). The highlight was probably Genevieve coming 2nd A string and Molly coming 1st B string as their final event in the steeple chase. What legends. They represent what SAL is about and we wouldn’t have done half as well without them. We can’t wait for them to inspire even more people to try events outside their specialism and bring even more fun to the day. In the men’s field events, there were some great performances, with several athletes competing in multiple events, adding a shed loads of valuable points – with Thomas Wasserman doing the shot, discus, hammer and javelin!! Pritvi added to his high jump win with a long jump, shot put and discuss! Ivan joined Thomas in the hammer and javelin (where they both threw over 30m) and also did the pole vault with Malakai. Malakai (who is an U17) showed his potential and ability to compete with the seniors across a range of disciplines – doing the triple jump and pole vault, to complement his 400mH B win at the start of the day. It was also great to see Etienne Munday competing again – with a great long jump to add to his 400m.

The middle distances (800m and 1500m) were covered by Yann Sevestre and yours truly – getting two 2nd places in the 800 and a 2nd and 3rd in the 1500. Particular credit to Yann, who upon learning that the Victoria Park A string 800m athlete is “trying to break 1:50 this year [for the 800]” went out hard and tried to race him for 1st place in both races! We had a couple of last minute withdrawals in the 400m and a massive thanks for Etienne Munday to stepping up to the A string and also Pete Wooton for agreeing to debut in the 400m with about 5 minutes notice!!

Our sprint squad were in fine form again. We were delighted to welcome back Leon Seale, who ran a 10.79 in Belgium earlier this month, and gained us a superb 2nd place as A string in the 100 and 200m (the latter with a time of 22.0!). It was also great to have Carlos Mingoes back in the team after missing the fist match due to injury and he stormed to victory in the 100m B race, following this up with a second place in the 200m B race. Our sprinters also won the relay with Carlos, Leon, Neo and Trey fending of a very strong challenge from Viccy Park (who pride themselves on the strength of their sprint squad) to win in 42.9! Asia Emanuel and Nevicia-Terilee Pecco represented in the 100m and Caitlin Leach sprinting as a non-scorer. Asia came in 3rd place with 13.5s and Nevecia came 5th in 14.5s. Noelle O’Reagan and Sophie LaPlace took on the 200m. Both athletes came in 5th in 28.5s and 30.5s. Sophie and Molly then competed in the 400m, working right to the line to maximise points. Sophie was 4th in 67.4 and Molly was 3rd in 68.9.

The 5000m was won in the bag with both Jessica Prior and Emily Clarke securing wins in each string and PBs of 18:26 and 18:58. Jess went on to get a personal best in both the discus and 1500m (by over 10s in the latter as well as a B string win) with Lily coming second in the A-string to VPH in a time of 5.03. In the men’s 3000m there was a great back and forth battle between Andy Barnes and Will De Cothi with Will just pipping Andy by 0.3s in the end! Will then enthusiastically agreed to debut in the Steeplechase alongside fellow Steeplechase debutant Pete Wooton, giving rise to another back-and-forth battle with Will just pipping Pete at the very end - again by 0.3 seconds!

The final relay events were seriously exciting with Asia closing an impressive gap to bring the team home in 3rd in the 4x100m team made up of Asia, Noelle, Molly and Nevecia. The day concluded with two 4x400 mixed relays. The teams showed the depth across both the sprints and middle distance sections of the club with athletes taking on a much longer/shorter race distance than used to and secured respectable points in both the A and B string coming in 5th and 3rd.

All in all, we covered almost every single event, with only one gap (sprint hurdles) on the men’s side and very few on the women’s – and this is testament to the fantastic attitude of all the athletes and team culture, with athletes willingly substituting themselves into the team to fill gaps outside of their specialist events, supporting other athletes whilst they are competing, sharing food and drink, and just simply having fun!! Being so successful in both matches so far puts us in excellent contention for promotion to the national division 1. We are so excited to have full teams out guns blazing into the next two fixtures – promotion is seriously in our sights and it is made possible by such an incredible effort by our athletes in our first home and away matches. We can’t wait to take an even bigger squad to Cambridge and Ware to give our everything for promotion!!!

Massive thanks go to Jonathan Litchfield for officiating support throughout the whole day – not just helping the event run smoothly but also gaining valuable points for the team. Also thanks to Kwasi who came straight from work, ran a 3000m and then became team photographer – and interviewer – I recommend the post-steeplechase discussion with Will and Pete on Facebook if you haven’t seen it yet! Credit too to the coaches Kurt and Kabir, as well as Dave Walton, for all their support on the day!

The next SAL is in Cambridge on Sunday 14th July – we will have a coach again. Please put this in your diary!! The team is doing absolutely brilliantly and we stand a real chance of getting promoted to the top division if we can continue to support our fantastic track and field team!!”

Teams
1st London Heathside 249 pts
2nd Herts Pheonix 241 pts
3rd Stevenage & North Herts/HWACS 241 pts
4th Harlow 212 pts
5th Victoria Park and Tower Hamlets 200 pts
6th Central Park 150 pts

Senior Men
100m
Leon Seale 11.2 A 2nd
Carlos Mingoes 11.4 B 1st
Neo Fujiwara 11.6 ns
Avery Dietrich (U20) 11.7 ns
No 125 11.8 ns
No 129 11.9 ns
George Mitchell 12.6 ns

200m
Leon Seale 22.0 A 2nd
Carlos Mingoes 23.7 B 2nd
No 125 23.6 ns
Neo Fujiwara 23.7 ns
No 127 24.9 ns
George Mitchell 25.6 ns
No 129 26.4 ns

400m
Etienne Munday 55.3 A 5th
Peter Whootton 60.8 B 5th

800m
Yann Sevestre 2:08.8 A 2nd
Richard Macaulay 2:09.6 B 2nd

1500m
Yann Sevestre 4:17.1 A 3rd
Richard Macaulay 4:28.6 B 2nd

3000m
William De Cothi 9:25.4 A 4th
Andy Barnes (V40) 9:26.7 B 1st
Kwasi Agyei-Owusu (V40) 10:45.4 ns

110mH
Trey Corlis (U20) 16.6 A 1st

400mH
Trey Corlis (U20) 64.6 A 2nd
Malakai David McKenzie Callum (U17) 63.7 B 1st

2000mH
William De Cothi 7:17.5 A 5th
Peter Wootton 7:17.8 B 1st

High Jump
Prithvi Raj Sharma (U20) 1.73m A 1st
Ivan Ross (V45) 1.43m B 4th

Pole Vault
Ivan Ross (V45) 2.50m A 4th
Malakai (U20) 2,10m B 3rd

Long Jump
Etienne Munday 6.10m A 2nd
Prithvi Raj Sharma (U20) 5.50m B 2nd
No 128 1.41m ns

Triple Jump
Neo Fujiwara 11.39m A 3rd
Malakai (U17) 10.62m B 2nd

Shot Putt
Thomas Wassermann (U20) 8.25m A 5th
Prithvi Raj Sharma (U20) 6.75m B 2nd

Discus
Thomas Wassermann (U20) 23.45m A 5th
Prithvi Raj Sharma (U20) 22.00m B 4th
Ivan Ross (V45) 17.83m ns

Hammer
Thomas Wassermann (U20) 22.80m A 4th
Ivan Ross (V45) 14.80m B 2nd  

javelin
Thomas Wassermann  (U20) 30.56m A 5th
Ivan Ross (V45) 30.14m B 3rd

4x100m
London Heathside 42.9 1st

Mixed 4x400m
London Heathside 4:09.5 A 5th
London Heathside 4:26.1 B 3rd


Senior Women
100m
Asia Emanuel (U17) 13.2 A 3rd
Jasmine Creer 14.5 B 5th

200m
Asia Emanuel (U17) 28.5 A 5th
Noelle O’Regan 30.5 B 5th

400m
Sophie Laplace 67.4 A 4th
Molly Harrison 68.9 B 3rd

800m
Lily Woolcock 2:30.2 A 1st
Genevieve Weston 2:52.1 B 3rd

1500m
Lily Woolcock 5:03.3 A 2nd
Jessica Prior 5:06.4 B 1st

5000m
Jessica Prior 18:26.9 A 1st
Emily Clark 18:58.1 B 1st

100mH
Molly Harrison 23.0 A 4th

400mH
Genevieve Weston 94.4 A 5th

1500mSC
Genvieve Weston 6:15.8 A 2nd
Molly Harrison 6:41.6 B 1st

High Jump
Molly Harrison 1.25m A 5th
? 1.03m B 4th

Pole Vault
No Competitor

Long Jump
? 3.17m A 4th
? 3.08m B 4th

Triple Jump
Genevieve Weston 6.05m A 4th
? 5.21m B 3rd

Shot Putt
Molly Harrison 6.51m A 4th
Lorna Stevenson 5.43m B 4th

Discus
Jessica Prior 17.07m A 5th
Genevieve Weston 14.18m  B 2nd

Hammer
Lorna Stevenson 14.57m 4th

Javelin
Molly Harrison 14.27m A 4th
Genevieve Weston 11.53m B 5th

4x100m
London Heathside 56.9 A 3rd