Triumph for Cumbrian athletes
Last updated 19:52, Thursday, 18 September 2008
CUMBRIA’S young athletics stars rose magnificently to the challenge against six other Border counties in the end-of-season meeting at Carlisle’s Sheepmount on Saturday to storm away to win the match.
Against the cream of the North East and southern Scotland, Cumbria’s U15 and U17 teams led from start to finish in a close battle with Tees Valley, finally pulling comfortably away over the last few events to win by 23 points.
It was a highly successful meeting that produced well in excess of 60 personal best performances with almost half the Cumbria team producing 20 of them.
Team manager Gwenda Ward said: “The Cumbrians showed real commitment and took athletics to another level in the county.
“The huge number of personal bests shows how important this level of competition is to the sport’s development.
“We gave all these young people a chance to excel and show what they can do and they certainly rose to the challenge.”
Stars of the meeting for Cumbria were the team captains, Nick Miller (Border Harriers) from Carlisle and Chelsie Browbank (Carlisle Aspatria) of Wigton.
Miller set a new personal best of 52.48m in winning the U17 hammer.
He also scored valuable points for the county coming second in the discus and javelin.
Browbank easily won her speciality 200m in 26 seconds and raced the 100m in fine style to set a new pb of 12.58 to head the North West rankings. They received the Unite Trophy kindly donated by the Unite Union.
Fourteen-year-old Luke Ingham of Kendal sliced almost five seconds off his pb to win the U15 800m in 2.11.33 and Fiona Laurie (Border Harriers) from Brampton shattered her pb in the U17 300m winning in 42.47 seconds and added 15cm to her best in the long jump.
Workington boy Kieran Congdon, a pupil at Stainburn School and member of Carlisle Aspatria club, set a pb of 11.8 seconds in the U15 100m.
Results - Team: 1, Cumbria (Cum) 279 points; 2, Tees Valley (TV) 254; 3, Tyne & Wear (T&W) 244.5; 4, Northumberland (N/Land) 180; 5, Scottish Borders (SB) 178; 6, Durham (Dur) 163; 7, Dumfries & Galloway (D&G) 152.5.
Other Cumbria winners were: Natasha Wooley, U15 girls javelin (29.61); Alex Taylor, U15 boys javelin (36.82; Kirsty Norwood, U15 girls high jump (1.51); Josh Richardson, U17 men triple jump (12.50); Katy Barnard, U17 women discus (27.22); Laura Valliant, U17 women 1500m (5.06.21); James Bowness, U17 men 1500m (4.10.62); Abbie Hetherington, U15 girls 1500m (4.56.87).
