High Jump Master Class by Wendy Phillips
Wendy Phillips of City of Lisburn AC is a familiar figure at Mary Peters Track as an official and a coach but has an impressive athletic history of her own. As an accomplished high jumper and pentathlete she represented NI on many occasions most notably in the Commonwealth Games in 1978 in Edmonton, Canada. Recently she took time out of her busy schedule to present an informal high jump master class to the EDAC Juniors. All ages and abilities turned up to hear her advice and attempt to follow her patient instruction. Her personal best height of 1.82m was set up as a demonstration so that the young athletes could visualise her achievements and then they were put through drills on low hurdles before undertaking coached jumps. It was a successful evening and the athletes and coaches were very grateful to her for sharing her legacy. The foundations for future progress in this discipline have been laid thanks to her input.
Firmus Fab 5 Event 2
6 EDAC juniors attended the second Firmus Fab 5 competition at Mary Peter’s track on Thursday 12 May. There were intermittent showers and although most races got away dry, it was still rather windy. While there is a high standard at the top level in each race there are also a lot of the athletes who are new to track and field and use these meets to try out a number of events to see which they prefer. The events on offer included 60m (U11), 200m, 600m (U11), 1500m and long jump.
U11
Alicia McCaugherty took part in both the U11 60m race and long jump. In the 60m there were 4 heats with 20 girls in total taking part. Alicia is relatively new to the track so she did well to record a time of 11.13 seconds coming 18th. She jumped 2.50m and came 9th out of 15 in the long jump.
U15 Event
Aaron Lennon had a busy evening taking on three events in the U15 age category. In the long jump he cleared 3.84m coming 9th out of 10 competitors. His best event was the 200m where he came 3rd in the second of 2 heats and 6th overall. He also took on the 1500m at the end of the meet where he ran 5.30 to come 12th.
Thomas Magee also made the most of the opportunity by taking on the U15 200m and 1500m. He is only 13 and so is young for this category. He ran in the first 200m heat coming 5th in a time of 30.66 and 11th overall. In the 1500m he clocked a time of 6.00 dead. Alex Robinson thought he would try his hand at the 200m distance. This was his first time trying this shorter distance as he is normally more comfortable with cross country and longer track distances. He came 5th in the second U15 heat in a time of 29.19 placing 9th overall. A good performance as he has another year in this category.
U17
Ollie Robinson has found a new love of shorter track distances. Sporting shiny new spikes, he lined up for his heat in U17 200m. He came second behind the eventual overall winner in a time of 24.20 which is a new PB for him at this distance. His previous PB of 28.89 was set in 2020. When the heat times were compared he placed 4th overall just missing podium by a narrow margin. Hannah Lennon in U17 200m came second in her heat in a time of 29.44 which placed her 6th overall. She is clearly enjoying the track season so far. The third event in the series is on Thursday 2nd June. Entries are in advance and online at the following link; https://athleticsni.org/Fixtures/Track-and-Field/Firmus-Fab-5-Meets
