Home SAL win to move up league table
The Southern Athletics League team were able to use home advantage to take a comfortable win in the second fixture on Sunday 11 July. The overall league is determined by the best result of the season, and Woodford’s final 360.2 was just 0.63points better than Havering achieved in the first match which they hosted. The gap in the match itself was much wider, with Havering almost 50 points behind, followed by Thurrock, Ilford and Newham & Essex Beagles.
It will be some time before all the results are in for round 2, but WGEL will move up the table substantially from 44 of 96 after match one (the score would have been good enough for 10th in round 1). Points are calculated on a performance basis and the overall performance of the match was Lucy Marshall, who won the hammer with 57.35 ahead of newly-crowned English Schools senior champion Simbi Sikiru who won the B in 47.73. Woodford dominated the throwing events, winning 7 out of 8 A strings with Precious Hamilton’s discus success of 43.20 the 2nd best score of the match and Chris Linque’s A string discus win of 45.37 the best male performance closely followed by Peter Clarke’s A string win in the hammer of 50.62. Lucy Marshall was the best overall performer, including a shot put win in 10.60 and a 22.87 javelin plus a non-scoring 29.26 in the discus just ahead of Abigail Allen who also threw a PB of 39.86 in the non-scoring hammer.
The top male points scorer was Samuel Oshodi, who headlined with a win in the men’s long jump in 6.48PB but also took second in the B high jump (1.60) and 4th in the mens triple jump (11.86) before leading off the victorious mixed 4x400m relay team. Hugh Williams won the A shot (11.77) and B discus (33.87) while winning the B hammer at short notice in 28.97. Joba Ashiru was another just back from English Schools, missing out on the high jump win on countback (1.85) before taking the B long jump in 6.08.
On the track George Vaughan set the tone with a comfortable win in the 400m hurdles in 54.90. WGEL took a one-two in the 800m with Anna Clark (2:14.14) and Louise Gilbert (2:17.84), though Thomas Adolphus and M45 Peter Caton found the going tough in the men’s race despite season's bests. Woodford was then dominant in the 100m races, with Gwen Datey taking the women’s A race in 12.35 while Jo Ryan impressively won the B in 12.45. Medwin Odamtten won the men’s A race in 11.14 with Moyin Odeniran taking the B in 11.31, though Nabil Tezkratt fresh from his English schools silver medal at 400m was faster in the non-scoring race in 11.03, with additional personal bests from U17s Kaidan Chambers (11.50), Ben Richards (11.99) and Miles Whitchelo (12.24), plus U17W Tiya Canning Lawrence (13.54).
Woodford added to the strong 100m performances with a clean sweep at 400m. Kyra Boyce took the women’s A race in a of 57,87, while Anna Clark doubled back to win the B in 59.84 while amongst the non-scorers Rennay Dobson improved her PB significantly in 65.56. In his first league appearance for Woodford Joe Dickenson comfortably took the A race in 50.27 with Adrian Richards the next finisher in 52.38 to take the B string. Early field events were also strong, while Amelia MacDonald missed out on long jump victory (5.19) Larrisa Anipa won the B in a significant step forward with 4.87. Having established a significant lead Woodford consolidated their position with a win in the men’s javelin from Lee Lovelock-Jemott in 46.65. Larrisa also took the B string triple jump in another PB of 9.03 behind U17 Kharina Partridge’s new best of 10.06 for second in the A string.
WGEL reasserted their dominance with another double win in the women’s 200m, with Gwen Datey winning in a PB of 25.18 and Joanne Ryan again taking victory in the B race in 25.95. In the men Medwin Oddamtten matched the time of first place in 23.10 and Winfred Hakeem was slightly quicker in winning the B race in 23.02. At 1500m, Alicia McArdell’s second best time of 4:51.20 was not enough to take the 1500m win but behind her Lily Yates (4:59.25) and non-scorer Jess Adams (4:59.41) broke the 5 minute barrier for the first time. Similarly in the men both Joel Doye (4:14.23) and U17 Max Richards (4:16.89) set significant personal bests.
Having led the match throughout, Woodford won both 4x100m relays convincingly. The women’s team of Larrisa Anipa, Jo Ryan, Gwen Datey and U17 Zahara Malcolm comfortably won the women’s race in 49.71 (with an U17 team setting a seasons best of 52.42), exactly matching the team’s best performance in the league from match 1, before the men (Kaidan Chambers, Medwin Odamtten, Winfred Hakeem and Joey O’Neill) took their race in 44.62. To round out the overall victory, two evenly matched mixed 4x400m teams finished one and two in the final race, with Samuel Oshodi (54.2), Kyra Boyce (59.1), Anna Clark (59.8) and Adrian Richards (51.4) in a club best of 3:44.45 holding off a fast finishing quartet of Tom Adolphus (56.8), Zahara Malcolm (60.5), Jo Ryan (58.0) and George Vaughan (50.9) in 3:46.25 well ahead of the other clubs. The result confirms how competitive the club can be in the SAL despite not consistently fielding a full teamsheet, hopefully the next SAL home match on Saturday 14 August may provide an opportunity to improve further in the overall league.