T&F season to date

Despite a multitude of interruptions to training - illness, niggly little injuries, other sports, exam time, weather ......... the group is making good progress through the season and achieving PBs in a number of different events, across all our age groups. Athletes from the group have already competed in Open meetings, the YDL, the Cheshire league & the T&F Championships in Greater Manchester & Derbyshire. To some it has been their debut club T&F season and they have settled into it very quickly and impressively. Others have gone up an age group and are dealing with new events extremely well eg. the U13s throwing proper shot and javelin for the first time! Extremely valuable competition experience is being gained by the group, all the time, which will hold them in good stead in the future. The attitude of most of the group towards multi-eventing is also superb. I quote a Mum: "two events he hasn't done before - we're up for it".

With multi-eventing and that sort of positive attitude, being a cornerstone of our philosophy, all options and opportunities are left open to our young athletes. Three really good examples of this come from last weeks T&F Championships. 18 months ago Sam would never have chosen to do Javelin & Hurdles and yet that is what he opted for on the first day of the Derbyshire event, gaining a good PB in the hurdles. We are very limited with the amount of time we can invest in a very technical event such as Discus and yet Lauren had the confidence to compete and get a 4th place and PB in it! Probably the best example of keeping all options open and thus taking opportunities when they come your way, is Harry's performances in the Javelin (a PB of over 35m! - currently ranked 49th in the UK) and a solid performance in the Shot, which followed straight after an energy packed, dynamic, aggresive Javelin event. As he was the ONLY boy in the U15 category, in these two events, at the Greater Manchester T&F Championships, he picked up two Gold Medals! There is a very obvious but very correct old saying "If your not in it, you can't win it!"

Congratulations to Harry, Sam and Lauren on their achievements at the T&F Championships and I hope next year many more of our athletes will compete in this two day event, which is more conducive to athletes who want to multi-event.

On that note, I hope to see even greater numbers from the group competing in T&F competitions fo the rest of this Summer. As a genuine multi-event group, it's hard to compete against athletes who are sometimes in the event group stage or are already specialising or are just investing more time into training than we are currently and so winning isn't a particularly realistic objective. PBs, working on technique, working on speed, gaining competition experience etc etc etc are all part of what a good T&F season can offer and are always very achievable.

The coaching group look forward to watching our young athletes achieve many more of their personal goals throughout the rest of the season!