The following report appears in the Yate & Sodbury Gazette:
TOBY Conibear – fresh from a Brimsham Green School band tour to Holland – competed for England in the Home International Schools competition, writes Stuart Nunn.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, he was a little down on recent form, throwing the hammer 59.36m. This however was enough for the silver medal.
The following day he competed again, this time for Avon in the South West Inter-Counties match at Exeter and won that competition convincingly. He was not the only Yate athlete to do well there. Ben Wells has shown good form over 200m this season and won his event in 21.99 secs. Colleague Kane Lee is also in good form and won the 800m with a time of 1:56.66 secs.
The young athletes of Yate & District AC have struggled all summer to prevent relegation in the lower age group of the Youth Development League. On Sunday, at Swindon, despite a fantastic effort from the whole team, they missed out by just twelve points.
Nevertheless, there were some highlights from the Yate crew. All the under-15 boyos performed strongly, but the high point came in the high jump, where Luke Ball not only increased his personal best, but broke the league record. His final jump of 1.91m was well over twenty centimetres beyond the best of the rest. (If you have a tape measure handy, check out how high 1.91m is, and then imagine a fourteen-year-old boy jumping over it).
Luke also won the 80m hurdles and lent a hand in the discus. So a busy afternoon, as it was for Adam Nolan who kwon the B race in the 80m hurdles and clocked second places in the 300m and pole vault.
Other winners were Alex Elliott in the shot; Matthew Page in the hammer, and Theo Spurell and Adam Shrewsbury in the javelin.
The under-15 girls were not to be outdone with wins for Naomi Dawson and Molly Bryant in the 75m hurdles; for Grace Horswell in the pole vault and Evie Boucher-White in the high jump.
In the under-13 age groups, success was harder to find, but Laura Chance ran a storming 800m to win the event.
Team manager Sam Hillier-Smith paid tribute to her young team, saying that they had given everything they could. For much of the afternoon, things looked hopeful, but the relays pushed the team down into fourth place. Next season they will be in Division One, from where the return to the premiership must be planned.