Hertfordshire Schools Girls achieved a remarkable result over the weekend at the South East Regional Schools Combined Event Championships held at the Copthall Barnet Stadium in North London.  They won all three Team Titles, ensuring they all travel to the National Championships at Exeter in September.  Six of the eleven girls were Herts Phoenix Athletes and they all played a crucial part in this outstanding achievement.  Pictured here are the Intermediate Girls Team of Claire Humphries, Bunmi Awokoya, Stephanie Gaynor and Laura Wake.

 

In fact it is unlikely that one County has achieved this before and although there were no individual victories for the Herts athletes, they worked together to accomplish team successes.

The Senior Girls started their Heptathlon campaign on Saturday morning with the 100m Hurdles competition and the three Team Members immediately established pole position thanks to some fine hurdling from Phoenix’s Hayley Kruse and Natalie Farman, with Natalie getting a new personal best of 15.8.

Shortly afterwards the Intermediate Girls started their campaign, with three of the four in the Team being HPX athletes, Stephanie Gaynor, Laura Wake and Claire Humphries.  Once again, thanks to some fine performances in the sprint hurdles, they too claimed the top team spot early on.

The Senior Girls were never to lose their top spot, but as the Intermediate Girls were to find out there was some tough competition in the form of the Sussex and Hampshire Teams and it was the latter who took over the top spot after the High Jump Competition, despite Laura Wake setting a new personal best.

Hampshire still held onto their lead after the Shot Putt competition and indeed Sussex began to threaten the Herts Team’s second position.  However, after a series of very good 200m races, the Herts Team retired at the end of the first day, along with their colleagues in the senior Team, in first place.

At the start of the second day, the Junior Girls started their Pentathlon campaign, with HPX’s Jenny Hutchings in the Team, and like their older colleagues immediately went into the lead.  Shortly afterwards the Intermediate Girls started their second day with the Long Jump and Laura Wake returned to record another personal best with a jump of 4.89m, whilst fourth team member Bunmi Awokoya from Stevenage & North Herts AC also recorded one with a massive 5.20m. Good performances from Stephanie and Claire put the team clear by nearly 500 points.

Good steady performances by the Junior Girls Team in the shot Putt saw them extend their lead by another 40 points and again it was Hampshire doing the chasing.

The Senior Girls started their second day with the Long Jump and by lunch time, following good performances all round, they maintain their top spot.  The Inter-Girls Javelin competition also finished at about the same time and despite Bunmi Awokoya claiming her second personal best, both Hampshire and Sussex closed the gap slightly leaving only the 800m to settle the competition.

The Junior Girls High Jump competition saw them consolidate their lead and nothing changed in the Senior Girls competition after their Javelin event.

The Junior Girls started their Long Jump competition by the time the Inter-Girls were lining up for their 800m and with only 17 girls left in the competition Claire Humphries found herself in the first 800m race and ran well to record a new personal best of 2:44.9.  In the second race Bunmi, Stephanie and Laura had to contain the two Sussex girls to prevent any serious erosion of their lead and indeed Stephanie contained the key Sussex athlete whilst both Bunmi and Laura increased their points lead over the other.

The Senior Girls had no real threat and they completed their competition securing their Team place in Exeter with Hayley finishing second overall, Natalie fourth and the third Team Member Katie James taking fifth.

The Inter-Girls completed their competition winning by more than 300 points, with Bunmi finishing second, Stephanie sixth, Laura eighth and Claire ninth.

There was a long wait for the Junior Girls to complete their Long Jump, but eventually this showed that they had consolidated their lead again, but not by much and it left the situation open for the Hampshire to challenge.  This they did and it took sometime to announce the eventual Team winners but with the Hertfordshire Girls packing together to take fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth places they scraped through to take the title by just 23 points.

Two other Herts Phoenix Athletes were also in action. Nathan Wake was in the Inter-Boys Octathlon competition where he was in fine form recording three new personal bests in his last three events on his second day in the High Jump, Shot Putt and 1500m, with the following performances: Long Jump 5.14m, Discus 22.2m, Javelin 38.25m, 400m 50.2s, 100m hurdles 17.0s, High Jump 1.65m, Shot Putt 10.94m and 1500m 4:39.7.  These performances secured a points total of 4,140, good enough for eighth but just outside a place in the National Championships.

Alec Wing was the sole Hertfordshire competitor in the Senior Boys Decathlon, and he too finish eighth with a series of good performances across his ten events, again just missing out on a place in the National Championships.