As ever this year's English Schools Championships were excellently organised with the best young athletes in the country producing great performances in warm and sunny weather in front of very large numbers of spectators. With the precision timing of events this mini "Olympics" is both a spectacle and a somewhat daunting event for young inexperienced athletes.
13 year old Clarice Underwood, a first year in the Junior Girls age group (U15's), was taking part primarily for the experience with ambitions to be very competitive next year. She competes for Chiltern Harriers and attends Chesham High School and has been very successful so far this summer in both 100m and 200m races with personal best times improved substantially.
For 200m her times have improved from 29.2 secs down to 27.0 secs. At 100m her times are even more impressive with an improvement from 14.0 secs down to the English Schools qualifying time of 12.8 secs prior to these championships.
On Friday running in Heat 3 of 3 Clarice knew she needed to finish in the first two places to guarantee a place in Saturday's final. In her heat were the Southern Champs bronze medallist and also two very good sprinters from the North of England. Drawn in lane 1 she had to deal with a false start before running the best and fastest 100m of her young life. From gun to line she held 2nd position to record 12.49 secs a massive Pb and well inside the ESAA National Standard of 12.6 secs, it was also inside the qualifying standard for the Inter girls age group (U17's). The Southern bronze medallist didn't make the final.
On the Saturday Clarice anchored the Bucks Junior Girls 4x100m relay team to a place in the final when finishing 3rd in their heat. This event took place about 1H hours before her 100m final and may have left her a bit tired.
However, in the final Clarice was drawn in lane 2 with the eventual champion Ashleigh Nelson in lane 3. Undaunted by the occasion she ran another brilliant race and although finishing 8th was just hundredths of a second away from 5th place. Her time was 12.59 secs just 0.1 seconds slower than in the heat and all 8 girls were inside the National standard. The champion broke the championship best performance and Katherine Merry's 16-year-old championship record with a time of 11.58 secs. This time was so outstanding it would have placed her 2nd in the Senior Women's AAA's champs final last Saturday.
Clarice rounded off her first English Schools Championships experience in fine style by anchoring the County relay team, consisting of a sprint hurdler Catherine Hall-Jones (Dr Challoners High), a Long Jumper and an 800m runner, to 6th place in the Final. Club coach Gary Howells was astounded by her performances and by her composure and believes she will enjoy greater success at future championships.
Intermediate Boys (U17's) 800m runner Matthew Bennett from Chesham High competed in the first of 5 heats of the 800m on Friday. With only the first two in each heat guaranteed a place in the Semi Finals on Saturday and 3 out of the top 4 ranked athletes in the country in his heat qualifying was going to be tough. Following a slow tactical first lap the race erupted into action with 200m to go and Matthew could only finish 5th in a fast finish in a time of 2mins 1.2 secs.