Student athletes impress indoors
The indoor BUCS champs saw several impressive performances from Woodford student athletes, while US-based students ran times that place them highly on their respective British rankings lists.
The BUCS championships at Sheffield began on Friday 24th February, with the first day highlighted by 60m events. Cameron Fillery was the fastest qualifier in the mens 60m hurdles (7.93) but was unable to add to his UK bronze medal in the final, finishing a close fourth in 7.95 seconds. HCA athlete Jane Davidson ran her second PB of the day in her 60m hurdles final of 8.45 for the bronze medal, improving her best further from 8.53 in the heat (8.55 sf). Rebecca Matheson just missed out on the 60m final despite a season’s best of 7.61 in the semi-final. On the field Hugh Williams was unable to progress to the final after 11.90 in men’s shot qualifying.
Saturday was mostly about qualifying, with Louise Gilbert just making the 800m final after a 2:11.64 season’s best but HCA Leah Keisler missing out in 2:12.71. Sunday’s final was notably faster, with Louise’s 2:10.42 absolute PB sufficient for 5th. Kyra Boyce struggled with the bends in her first ever indoor race so did not progress out of the 400m heats. Joba Ashiru found 1.91 sufficient to progress to the men’s high jump final whereas Jess Gordon was unable to make it through the women’s pools (1.58). Joba finished 8th in his Sunday final in 1.93. While HCA Calum Henderson topped his long jump pool in 6.96, the lack of any automatic qualifiers suggested that Sunday’s final would be tight. Calum started the final steadily before a third round 7.23, his best since 2019, put him up to 2nd place. However Calum moved into first with his final jump, with 7.30 taking the title for Loughborough by 2cm.
Rebecca Matheson returned on Sunday looking to add to her bronze medals at the last two indoor 200m championships. However, despite winning her heat (24.73) and semi-final (24.46SB) she was not the fastest Woodford athlete as under-20 Gwendoline Datey was the fastest qualifier in the first round (24.59) and ran an absolute PB of 24.27 for second in a tight semi-final. Seeding left Gwen and Rebecca with unfavourable lanes 2 and 3 in the final, meaning neither could re-create their earlier times as they finished fourth and fifth respectively (24.61 versus 24.74). Gwen then had the task of anchoring the favourites Loughborough in the 4x200m relay final, but despite her team holding a narrow lead through the first 3 legs Gwen was impeded by an athlete changing lanes just ahead of the changeover. This left her team adrift and they crossed the line in third (1:41.39) before substantial deliberation led to the first two teams being disqualified and then Strathclyde reinstated on appeal to leave Gwen’s Loughborough quartet with silver.
Woodford’s US-based student athletes this weekend had one last chance to qualify for the NCAA indoor championships, but standards in the US are such that no BUCS winner this weekend would have come close to doing so. Reigning world U20 champion Yemi Mary John ran her first race in the US on a flat 300m track in Seattle, with her 52.05 sufficient to qualify for the 400m by less than 0.1s. Her USC relay quartet qualified with 3:29.78 which was quicker than the time the GB team featuring Yemi Mary ran in last year’s world indoor final. HCA Rebecca Grieve briefly went back to the top of the British U20 400m rankings with 54.16A on Saturday, but her fourth Scottish U20 best of the winter was not even in the top 100 on the NCAA qualifying list. Nayanna Dubarry-Gay ran a season’s best of 54.47 in Texas, but neither she nor twin sister Kiah, who ran 23.94 in the 200m, made it out of the heat of their Big 12 indoor championships.