Lucy Marshall headlines home SAL

WGEL finished second in their home SAL fixture at Woodford on Saturday 16 July. The match was won by Ealing, Southall and Middlesex, but Woodford finished well clear of Ashford AC and Bedford and County.

Starting the match with a bang, Lucy Marshall, who recently became world masters champion in the hammer, broke her own British W40 record with 55.74. Not content with her female athlete of the match performance, Lucy went on to take maximum points across 3 more events, winning the shot and discus and taking the B string javelin behind Kirsty Bateman Foley’s A string win of 38.43. Top men’s points scorer was Devon Douglas, whose 4 events included 3 B string wins in the hammer, discus in 38.85 (behind Christopher Linque’s 42.66 win) and in 11.49. The men’s shot winner was Hugh Williams, in 11.77, who unusually scored as many points in jumps as throws including a second place in the B HJ (1.40 =PB). Another covering some unexpected events was Temi Olusesan, whose performances included a B string shot put win.

Denesha Rocastle took a long jump victory in addition to a PB in her main event, the triple jump, where she won impressively in 11.89. Lawrence Davis took the men’s long jump in 6.69, while U17M Marcel Winter’s equal PB in the high jump of 1.70 was good enough for second.

First up on the track Rhianna Buaku narrowly failed to take the 400m hurdles, with Millie Finch winning the B. Woodford swept the board in the short sprints, with Merveilles Massembo (11.01 and 22.36PB) ahead of Uche Egbon in both 100m and 200m for the men (11.20 and 22.84PB). Lakhesia Adams Poku (12.95 and 26.40, both wind-legal PBs)  and Eloise Lewis matched the feat for the women. Among those achieving personal bests in the non-scoring races were U17W Keisha Bediako in the 200m, 28.54, while only the wind denied Marcel Winter in the 100m (11.25 +2.9). In the distance events the only win came from Alex Wardle’s 1500m B string, a surprise after after having already run the 3000m and behind Alicia McArdell’s seasons best of 4:56.27 which came after Alicia was tripped and fell in the 800m.

While there were victories for George Vaughan in the 100m hurdles (14.95) and Sophie Anderson in the 400m (63.12), gaps elsewhere due to Covid and travel problems saw Ealing pass Woodford overall as the day wore on despite WGEL winning most of the events the team contested. A clean sweep of relays was not sufficient to reverse the result, but there were impressive wins by the men’s 4x100m (Winfred Hakeem, Uche Egbon, Merveilles Massembo and Marcel Winter) in 43.40 and the women’s 4x100 (Ashleigh Simmonds, Lakhesia Adams-Poku, Levania Ugonna and Eloise Lewis) in 50.56. The 4x400 teams were not the same quality but nonetheless were able to win in Woodford’s half of the double header fixture. The women’s quartet was led off by Lakhesia Adams-Poku in her debut at the distance followed by Millie Finch, Rennay Dobson and Rhianna Buaku finished over 20 seconds ahead of the next team in the WGEL match, while the men’s quartet of Uche Egbon, Josiah Dasilva, Nate Harding and Winfred Hakeem only had a team from the other match to race against.

The result brings WGEL up to mid-table in division 2 East with two matches remaining, but leaves promotion out of reach despite the next fixture also being at Ashton Playing Fields, on Saturday 13 August.