Having finished in 5th place in the opening match of the Midlands Premiership UK Youth Development League, Rugby and Northampton AC knew that a strong performance was essential, if the club is to retain its premiership status and the athletes did themselves proud! The standard was extremely high throughout, reflecting the status of the league as the top tier of junior athletics in the Midlands.
For the U13 girls, there were some outstanding performances – notably from Ona Ndefo with 2nd place in both the 70m hurdles in 12.1 secs and long jump with 4 m 30cm and also Lucy Goldthorpe with 7m 17cm in the shot. All girls ran, threw and jumped extremely well.
The U13 boys also produced some outstanding individual performances, with Arthur Tilt winning both the 1500m in 4mins 43 and the long jump with 4 m 88cm. There were also excellent performances in the throws with Harrison Barnes and Gabe Mayall dominating both the shot and javelin.
The U15 girls really exceeded all expectations and performed magnificently with three individual victories – two from Florence Matthews in the long jump and 200m with 5 m 06 and 26.6 sec respectively. Charlotte Burrows also claimed top spot in the hammer with an outstanding 28m.
The U15 boys was a mixture of new and experienced faces and they turned in some extremely eye catching performances to dominate the age group. Dara Falope ran 11.8 secs and 24.5 secs for the 100m and 200m. Jamie Talbot also ran a storming 200m in 24.8 secs before throwing over 11m in the shot. Henry Woodward and Ryan Buckley were first and second in the pole vault and there were further outstanding performances from Jeremy Gundle in the 300m and discus, Henry Woodward in the 1500m, Oliver Scott in the long jump and hammer and Lewis Gurney in both the high jump and hurdles.
The match was extremely tight throughout with the leading teams of Birchfield, Rugby and Northampton and Milton Keynes being separated by only a few points throughout the whole event. The final field events saw R and N perform well and they climbed up to an outstanding 2nd position – leaving them in joint third position with the third fixture being at Milton Keynes on Sunday 23rd June.
