On Saturday 21st June BAC made the trip to Portsmouth for the third SAL match of the season. The team was very much depleted in terms of both athletes and officials due to the match coinciding with the regional schools competitions and the England U20 and U23 Championships. The four female and eight male athletes, along with Ian Graham and Hazel Bates as time keeper and track judge respectively, pulled out all the stops to gain as many points as possible.

As usual, the first track event was the 400m hurdles, with Sarah Kearsey and Danielle Marshall comfortably winning the A and B-string races. Dave Flicos came fourth in the men’s A-string race.

The 800m followed, the A-string race possibly being the most competitive race of the day as far as BAC were concerned. Karl Welch led the race until the final 150m, where he was pipped to the post with a time of 1 min 57.9 secs. Jamie Grose won the B-string race, while Brandon Meredith, and under 17 athlete making his debut in the SAL gained a PB of 2 mins 22.7 secs as a non-scorer.

In the men’s 100m, U17 athlete, Moinul Uddin raced to 4th place with a new PB of 12.0 secs, and looks strong to run a sub-12 second 100m this season. Flicos gained a new SB, coming 5th in the B-string race.

In the 400m, both Danielle Marshall and Brandon Meredith placed 4th in the women’s and men’s races, respectively, with the latter gaining another PB.

Samantha Laws came 4th in the women’s 3000m race, while Ian White came 3rd with a SB in the men’s 5000m race.

Kearsey raced again, winning the 100m hurdles, with a new PB and later came 2nd in the women’s 200m.

The final race concerning BAC athletes took the form of the men’s 2000m steeplechase, with Jamie Grose winning by a huge margin, with a new PB of 6 mins 30.2 secs. This is all the more impressive considering he ran most of the race alone. Ian White also ran a PB, crossing the line in 3rd place in the B-string race.

In the field, Angie Spall placed a decent 2nd in the long jump, while Adam Nash comfortably won the men’s A-string long jump, with Flicos placing 3rd. This was a position Flicos matched in the triple jump, while in the women’s event, Danielle Marshall came 4th.

In the high jump, Angie Spall came 3rd, while in the men’s event, Andrew Brown came 2nd in the A-string, with a SB of 1.65m, with Flicos placing 4th in the B.

Brown and Flicos also won the A and B-string pole vault, respectively. Brown vaulted far higher than any of the other competitors in an event which was barely represented by the other teams.

In the women’s shot, Kearsey and Spall came 2nd and 1st in the A-string and B-string, respectively, with Spall gaining a PB of 7.33m. In the men’s event, Flicos came 5thand was later BAC’s only competitor in the hammer, coming 4th and picking up valuable points for the club.

Flicos came 4th in the A-string discus, with a new PB of 20.94m, while Adam Nash came 4th in the B-string. Kearsey also gained a new PB in the women’s event, gaining 2nd place in the A-string, while Spall won the B-string, with a SB.

Andrew Brown won the men’s javelin by a large margin, with 52.07m, and Flicos came 4th in the B-string. In the women’s event, Spall and Laws placed 4th and 3rd in the A and B-string, respectively.

During the fixture, the few BAC athletes attempted to fill as many events as possible. Even though winning the match was clearly unlikely, the team endeavoured to gain points, for the dignity of the club. BAC finished 4th overall, out of 5 teams, so the team must be congratulated for its efforts. Although this depletion was understandably due to other competitions on the same day, we hope to put out a stronger team next time round.

Thank you also to BAC’s supporters, Rob McTaggart and Peter Briant (also the men’s team manager) for cheering the team on, and to Ian White for driving the minibus.

If you find any errors of mistake with the report, please let me know so I can correct them.