Belgrave stay top of the league with 4th place finish in NAL round 2
After winning the opening round of the NAL in Milton Keynes, Belgrave athletes were raring to go for round 2 in Portsmouth in an effort to extend their lead at the top.
A strong men’s team turnout saw Belgrave take 2nd in the table, but bank holiday weekend absences left the women’s team unfortunately down on numbers, finishing 5th. Overall, Belgrave secured 4th place behind home favourites Portsmouth and the consistent team from Yeovil in 2nd. We were just pipped to 3rd by Yate on the back of points scored by the number of club officials in attendance.
After two rounds, Belgrave hold onto their lead in the tournament but are level on points with Yeovil.
With two matches still to come, it’s all to play for if we want to finish in the top 2 and secure promotion this year.
Sprints
The dream team of Sam Ige and Joe McGrath continued their run of excellent form to take the wins in both the A and B 100m and 200m events (despite a -6m/s headwind). Rosey Smythe had another good set of results in the women’s sprints and even dabbled in the Long Jump for some much needed points.
Kareem Selman-Jackson and Daniel Woodburn made light work of the 400m to take 1st in the A and 2nd in the B string races respectively. Despite the wind, Dan continued to chip away at his PB for a new best of 50.59 with a sub 50 clocking surely on the cards this season.
Hurdles
Alastair Stanley and Gareth Holden took home the maximum points in the men’s 400m hurdles with Alastair also putting in a strong performance for 3rd in the shorter 110m event.
Middle distance
Naomi Lenane pictured at the Southern road relays earlier this year.
The stars of the day Naomi Lenane and Catherine Hall covered all of the middle distance events between them and taking some fantastic victories to boot. Naomi comfortably won both the 1500m and 3000m (in an impressive 10:14.78 in poor conditions) with Catherine taking a 1st and a 2nd in the same events in the B string for a near full sweep of points.
In the men’s competitions Ben Ringrose-Voase and Ewan Sommerville, following on from 1500m PBs in the week, first took to the shorter 800m distance to test their mettle. With very close races in both the A and B competitions, both did incredibly well to take 3rd and 4th respectively and very close to that 2 minute barrier. Callum Stewart and Conall McNally turned out for the 3000m taking 3rd (A) and 2nd (B) respectively.
Jumps
Alastair once again accessed his full decathlon spectrum to secure good points in both the High Jump and the Long Jump where Peter Wild was the overall winner for Belgrave with a jump of 6.52m. As mentioned, sprinter Rosey supported the points effort by also trying hand a long jump and placing well.
Throws
Lina Shkeir was the sole representative for the women’s throws team and incredibly covered all four throws events herself scoring a total of 26 points. Very well done.
Peter Wild unfortunately suffered an injury in the long jump that meant he couldn’t take up his spot in the javelin but the tag team of Tom Ikeda and Chris Privett came to the rescue covering all throws apart from the A-string men’s discuss. There, Alistair Stanley launched into 3rd place with a great 41.23m throw in his 5th event of the day.
Relays
The men convincingly won the 4x100m in 43:01 but were pushed right to the line in an exciting win in the 4x400m relay. A strong comeback leg from Kareem led onto Dan Woodburn who sailed past the Portsmouth athlete on the last leg and held on to win by a quarter of a second in 3:25.39.
Next
This was another solid result for the team and it keeps us in the lead for now. Our next two matches are further afield in Yeovil and Yate, but we remain in a good position to secure promotion this year. We need the help of as many of our athletes and qualified officials as possible if we’re going to achieve this!