Herts Athletics Update

After a very busy week in athletics, Habs have eight Herts County schools champions with potentially seven boys being selected to represent the county in future competitions.

At the County Schools Championships on Saturday 11 June Michael Miller (U17), Rohan Oyewole (U15) and Ben Hocking (U13) all secured Javelin titles, the first two being selected to represent the County at the ESAA national champs in Gateshead on Friday 8 and Saturday 9 July and Ben to compete in an U13 Inter Counties match in Kingston Surrey at the end of July. Ben will be joined by Bryan Obar, who won the U13 shot at the County meet, and Nathan Oba Okusanya, who was runner up.

Henry Mattey is to be congratulated on a fine throw over 37 metres in winning the U15 boys discus gaining him selection for the Gateshead meet and congratulations to Ade Tokuta (U17 boys 100m hurdles) and Zamaan Dudhia (U15 boys Pole Vault) both winners who are waiting final confirmation of county selection for Gateshead. Freddie Shiret ran a fine solo U15 800m to win the title by some 5 seconds and really needed stiffer competition to push him to a faster time to definitely secure a county team place.

The U14 team had their regional round of the ESAA Track and Field cup on Monday 13 June. This year both their matches have been blighted by poor conditions and in Monday’s competition despite a good start on the track our strongest events on the field happened in torrential rain which resulted in our overall team total not improving by as much as we had hoped. In the end the team finished 5th out of 14, just 8 points from 3rd. Jonathan Cohen is to be congratulated on his 2m.60 pole vault performance in difficult conditions and Bryan Obar continued to make significant improvements in his 200m running with a time of 27 secs. Bryan is a Year 7 athlete competing against Year 8 opposition.

On Tuesday 14 June round 6 of the Herts League took place. Both teams had a successful evening securing their places in the Hertfordshire Schools Athletics League Final due to take place on the 5th July at Jarman Park. The U14s had wins from Jonathan Cohen (pole vault) Adam O’Reilly (triple Jump) Daniel Ward (Discus) and Ben Hocking (Javelin) and a 56 point team total was enough to see them qualify just ahead of Parmiters in the overall table but behind St Clement Danes.

The Under 16s have dominated virtually every match and have secured their place in the final by over 30 points. They achieved 67 points in this final match out of a possible 70. Hopefully this will serve well as a good warm up before their Regional final of the Track and Field Cup on Monday 20 June.