South West Indoor Champs - NIAC Cardiff
At the second part of this winter’s South West Junior Indoor Championships that also included the Welsh Junior Regional Champs, B&W had seven athletes competing. Only seven, but they each showed great form and made their mark on this meet.
Foremost were an emerging great pair of Under 15 boys Tommy Mattis-King and Daniel Webb. Both train under formidable Coach Julie Alexander at the Whitehall track and each chose to compete in the same three events at these Championships. First, they went for their main event the 60m hurdles and both earned South West medals. Tommy won his race and clocked an exceptional time of 9.71 secs to go second on the B&W Indoor ranking list in a very close race that included Welsh competitors. Tommy took the Gold Medal with that performance and Daniel took the Silver Medal with another great run of 10.52 secs.
Considering that both boys have only recently faced the mammoth task of changing age group and learning a new hurdle pattern, this was really exceptional. Quickly on to the long jump, Tommy again medalled to take the silver with a leap of 4.68m and Daniel followed with a leap of 4.22m. At the end of the meet both challenged the 60m flat and again both emerged with medals, Tommy taking the South West silver with 8.54 secs and Daniel the bronze with 8.77 secs. Not bad - five medals between them in one glorious day.
From the same coaching stable young Kezia Tarzey also ran in the hurdles and flat races. Kezia is a truly remarkable talent and emerging after a long lay-off with hamstring problems, recorded the fourth best B&W 60m hurdles time for an under 15 with a 9.94 secs clocking to take the South West bronze medal. In Kezia’s 60m flat race - against 39 other entries (some Welsh) - she clocked a creditable 8.60 secs.
Under 13 lad Parish Bailey struck my attention at part one of these championships before Christmas with a fine 200m run, and this time emphasised his range of talent by competing at 60m and 800m. Parish clocked 9.76 secs for 60m and then was timed at 2:46.18 for 800m to become the fifth fastest South West competitor.
A formidable trio of 800m ladies also competed in the B&W colours with established under 17 Holly Sanigar making a clear mark in her 800m event. Off straight away at the gun and clocking at around 40 secs per 200m lap Holly just devastated the field finishing in a great 2:21.14 finishing five seconds in front of the second placed athlete. Obviously, this outstanding run earned Holly the South West gold medal. Outstanding.
In the under 15 800m event, Mairi Carver-Brown and Holly Massey-Jones locked swords. Both sat in the pack in the early stage while a couple of Welsh competitors took a lead. However, after Holly leading Mairi for most of the race, Mairi took up the challenge in the last 100m to pip Holly and take a close silver medal in 2:39.03 to Holly’s 2:40.20. Holly finished as the fourth South West athlete for the day.
So, a really outstanding day all round for Bristol & West.
One earlier performance missed in previous reports was the 300m time of Isaac Marsh who clocked 36.24 secs and a 60m time of 7.02 secs at Manchester’s Sport City on 18th December to head both of those Indoor lists for this season. A great start for this under 20 athlete.
Our thanks to Mike Strange for the report