Last weekend Eight young members of Scunthorpe and District Athletics club had the chance to compete against the best young athletes in the country at the Aviva ESAA English Schools' Track & Field Championships, which were been held at the Alexander Stadium in Birmingham..

The championship is often referred to as the schools Olympics and this year was  broadcast on Sky TV, with the Saturday's events going out live in the afternoon.

Qualifying starts with 1,000’s of school children competing at regional events all over the country, they then progress onto County trials, from which the county schools associations select athletes to go to the Championships.

As well as coming in the first two at the County schools athletes are expected to have reached a strict qualifying standard. This will already rank most athletes in the top 30 in the country in their event.

6 of the Scunthorpe athletes represented Humberside schools the other two Scunthorpe athletes represented Lincolnshire schools.

It proved to be a day of heart ache for two athletes who just missed out on individual medals. First was Ashley WREN who was competed in the intermediate boys Long Jump, Ash had competed in the same event last year and was piped for the bronze medal in the very last round. Ash has had an injury hit season and had struggled all year to match his early season form when he jumped 6.70 whilst competing in Malta. But his supporters needn’t have worried when he rose to the challenge of the competition and jumped 6.81 in the 4^th round. This saw him again in 3^rd place going into the final round. But unfortunately it was to be a case of Dejavue when the athlete in fourth place produced a jump of 6.85 to push Ash in to fourth place for the second year running. Matching Ash’s performance was Sophie Croft in the senior girls 200m. Unlike Ash, Sophie has had a good season and has been producing some strong performances for her club in both the junior and senior leagues. But knew it was going to be a tall order to even make the final as she was at the bottom of the age group. The heats saw her finish just outside her personal best and qualify as 4^th fastest for the final. She was then to repeat that performance in the final and finished in fourth place although a strong head wind denied her the chance of setting a new best. After the event Sophie said ‘ It would have been nice to have got a medal , but there were 7 girls who had run faster than me this year in the competition so I am pleased to come fourth’ Hopefully next year will see Sophie be rewarded for her hard work.

Another athlete just outside the medals was Kate PATTISON in the junior girls Discus. Kate who was competing for Lincolnshire is also at the bottom of the age group and should be proud of her 5^th place however she will also think of what could of been as she had set a new club record during the week in a local schools event and a repeat distance would of saw her gain a medal. But Kate who has had a brilliant year qualifying for the Shot as well as the discus will look to put that right next year.

The other athletes competing in individual events were: Josh BONES in the senior boys Triple Jump. Another athlete at the bottom of the age group, Josh struggled to match his recent improving form and finished in 15^th place with a jump just under 14m. Stephanie O’CONNOR was competing in her first ever English schools and although she ran a strong race into a headwind she just missed qualifying for the semi finals. Finally Alice KAYE competing for Lincolnshire went one better making the semi finals of the intermediate girls 200m only missing out on a place in the final by 0.04 of a second. Alice could have qualified in 3 different events and her future maybe at the longer distances.

So going into the final events, the relays, it looked like Scunthorpe athletes may come away from the championships with no medals for the first time in a number of years. The first relay event saw the appearance of Tom CARLYON and Jordan WILLIAMS in the intermediate boys 4x100m but a poor change over on one of the legs saw them fail to qualify for the final when the finished as 9^th fastest over 4 heats.

But better was to come with Steph O’CONNOR in the junior girls 4x100m, Alice KAYE in the inter girls 4x100m and Sophie CROFT in the senior Girls 4x100m all helping their teams qualify for the final.  Alice ran the second leg for the Lincolnshire team but could only help the team to 7th place. Sophie also ran the second leg and ran a good back straight which helped the team gain a bronze medal. But it was Steph who went one better helping the Humberside junior girls win a silver medal. Steph had run the first leg and put in a powerful performance out of the blocks to give the team a clear lead after the first leg, it was very nearly a Gold medal when a strong final leg saw the team miss out by only 0.1 of a second..