Competing at the Watford BMC Meeting Wednesday evening, National U/20 1500m champion Ronnie Sparke continued his quest to achieve the UKA selection guideline for the World Junior Championships later this summer. In placing 2nd in the "A" race at Watford with 3m46.16 secs, Ronnie did improve his recent personal best of 3m46.6 secs, but remains shy of UKA's 3m44sec guideline. He did however break Chris Reynolds' Wooford U/20 Club record.Another Woodford athlete perhaps hoping to make those World Junior Championships in Moncton Canada, as part of the Irish 4x400m team, Paul Scanlan, at the weekend placed 2nd in the Irish U/20 400m championships, in an outdoor personal best of 48.77 secs. Other results from Watford included a season's best over 1500m from Kiwi, ParaOlympian, Tim Prendergast with 3m54.54 secs, and over 800m Olie Heeks recorded 1m50.19 secs, Gavin Lewis, 1m54.05 secs, and Omar Mansour 1m54.74 secs. This coming weekend in Mannheim, Germany, Anthony Oshodi has been selected to represent the GB junior team in the shot, and Junior Ejehu and Sam Watts are part of the 4x100m relay squad for that same meeting.
Some of WGwEL's better senior athletes were in action at Birmingham over the weekend competing in the Aviva UK Championships, and trials for the upcoming Barcelona European Championships. Whilst the weather was warm , the athletes did at times have to contend with quite strong blustery winds. Highlights amongst the Woodford results included a silver medal over 100m for Joice Maduaka, a bronze in the same race for Elaine O'Neil who also gained 200m silver, a triple jump bronze for Zainab Ceesay and a personal best and Club long jump record for Ezekiel Ewolu.
In the 3rd National Junior League, Southern Premier, fixture of the season WGwEL's U/20 team paced a solid 5th, which leaves them in 5th place in the overall League standings. Woodford scored 404 points, as Shaftesbury won with 525 points. Amongst a good all-round team performance, there was a fine sprint double from Sam Watts, and a personal bests from others, including 400m Hurdlers John Pride and Ben Phillips, and in the high jump for Sam Moodie.
WGwEL hosted the LICC meeting at Woodford on Saturday. Unfortunately the very strong winds affected all the track events, in particular the sprints that were run into strong headwinds. The discus was perhaps the highest standard competition with Emeka Udechuku winning with 58.64m from Tom Norman with 52.82m. Youngsters Youcef Zatat and Joseph Lascaris also threw well, and in the hammer there were a personal bests from U/17's Harry Clarke with 58.32m.and James Smith with 48.67m.
