Two Herts Phoenix athletes – Laura Wake of Presdales School and Millie Phelan of Broxbourne School competed for Hertfordshire this weekend of 28/29th June in the Schools Regional Combined Events championships at Reading. Laura competing in the Senior age group improved her Personal Best points total by some 300 points to come 3rd in this age category with a score of 4310 points. This performance qualifies her to compete in the English Schools Combined Events championships which take place at Birmingham in September.

Laura started on Saturday with a new PB in her 100m Hurdles with a time of 15.4 secs. She went on to secure good points on day one with 1.47m in High Jump, 8.83m in Shot Putt and 25.3s in her strongest event, the 200m. Day 2 on the Sunday started well with a Long Jump of 4.98m and a Javelin throw of 24.31m but it was the final 800m event that produced a very exciting finish and secured Laura her third spot. She knew that the girl lying in third place was about 30m ahead of her when she came round the bend into the final 200m. Laura then used her 200m sprinting ability and dug deep to produce a blistering finish to just pass her rival on the finishing line.

Millie was competing in her first full heptathlon in the Intermediate age group and achieved an impressive points total of 3729 to finish 12th out of a field of 22 athletes. On the way to achieving this total Millie achieved Personal Best performances in 3 out of the 7 events. Day one started with 80m Hurdles where Millie achieved a time of 13.2 secs. This was followed by her first PB in the High Jump. Millie has been showing good form in this event recently and in fact had to clear her best height of 1.58m twice as after her first clearance the officials declared that the bar had not been set up correctly. This was followed by a Shot Putt of 7.24m and another PB in 200m of 27.9s. On day 2 Millie achieved 4.68m in Long Jump, 16.19m in the Javelin and then finished the competition with a new 800m PB of 2.29.2s

Millie was joined by three other athletes from Hertfordshire and as a team they finished second. As a county Hertfordshire achieved second places in the Junior Boys and Inter Girls age groups. They came 3rd in the Junior Girls age groups and 4th in the Inter boys age groups.

Joining Laura at the English Schools finals are Sophie Lee from Abbotts Hill School and Dacorum and Tring AC who finished second in the Junior Girls age group and Nick Stoppard from Hitchin Boys and Stevenage and North Herts AC who came 3rd in the Inter Boys age group.

Ian Burrows

(Herts Phoenix AC and Hertfordshire Schools Combined Events Team Manager)