Berkshire Schools Athletic Association
Report June 2008

Berkshire Schools Athletics has once again had a very busy few weeks. The first round of the English Schools’ Schools’ Cup took place at  the Reading and Bracknell stadiums for the girls competition and were well supported with Downe House winning the Inter Girls at Reading with St Mary’s, Ascot winning the same event at Bracknell.

The Junior Girls was won at Reading by Queen Annes and at Bracknell by The Marist.

 This year we were delighted that  there were more  boys schools participating, so competitions were held at both Bracknell and Reading. The winner of the Junior boys at Bracknell  was The Forest and Reading Blue Coat at  the Reading track. The Inter boys saw Windsor Boys School as victors at Bracknell and Reading Blue Coat  School were the Inter boys winners at Reading. 

The track and field championships for Under 15, Under 17 and Under 19 athletes was held last Saturday in Reading on 14^th June. There some excellent performances with six Championship Best Performances being  recorded by Shelayna Oskan  (Slough) Senior Girls 400m, Rose Reynolds, (Bracknell) Senior Girls 100mhurdles, Ashley Fry, (Slough) Inter Boys  400mHurdles, Seamus Burke, (West Berks) Junior Boys 200m, Zac Seddon (Wokingham) Junior Boys 1500m and Sam Maguire (Reading) Junior Boys 80mHurdles.

The two George Saunders medals presented for overall best performances went to Helen Broadbridge (West Berks) for her excellent throw in the Inter Girls hammer and Bertie Lewis (West Berks) in the Inter Boys 100m Hurdles.

Despite coming first in none of the individual age groups the victorious aggregate team was Wokingham  closely followed by West Berks who won a total of four.

There were many athletes recording English Schools entry standards on the day and  for the first time ever the selectors had the difficult task of choosing from more than 35 athletes who had achieved the English Schools entry standards. The final team of 35 representing  Berkshire will compete in the English Schools championships at Gateshead in July. 

Teams will also be representing Berkshire in the regional finals of the Combined events which is being hosted by Berkshire Schools at Palmer Park, Reading at the end of June and it is hoped that some of these athletes will progress to the English Schools  finals in September. 

In conclusion I would like very much  to thank all the Berkshire A.A. officials who have given up so much of their time to help out at all the above  events and without whose help we would have great difficulty in running such successful competitions for all our  athletes in the Berkshire Schools. 

Stella Bacon  

Hon Sec Berkshire Schools A.A.

Schools International Athletics Board
Cross Country Match

Strathallan School, Perthshire
Friday 28th March 2008

Berkshire Junior Boys Zak Seddon of The Piggott School & Karnvir Hayer of Slough Grammar School represented England against the other Home Countries. Zak was first home on this occasion, finishing in second place in a time of 13:35, with Karnvir in 5^th place, just a few seconds behind in 13:44.

More information at http://www.esaa.net/

ESAA Sainsbury's English Schools'
National Cross Country Championship

Sefton Park, Liverpool
Saturday 8th March 2008

Berkshire Junior Boys Karnvir Hayer of Slough Grammar School and Zak Seddon of The Piggott School were selected to compete in the National Championships. Karnvir finished third in a time of 12minutes 59 seconds, with Zak 5^th in 13:04.

Both boys were then selected to represent England in the Schools International Athletics Board Cross Country Match