Sunday saw the opening match of the UK league at Havering Mayesbrook and for the newly promoted Medway and Maidstone ladies team it was a bit like the weather……..some good and some a bit more challenging! However all 16 athletes gave it everything they had and with a fantastic team spirit and many splendid performances M&M finished in 6th place only 7.5points behind Newham & Essex Beagles.
With her number one hammer thrower away in Australia it was down to team manager Dawn Copping to step in and fill the gap and she and Liz Duffin found it very tough in a competition full of 35m plus throwers. However they still opened the scoring with a creditable 5 points between them.
There were three victories on the day, all in the throws. New signings to the club this year Jo Blair and Lizzie Yarnold won both A and B string Javelin with 43m51 and 37m88 respectively in spite of almost torrential rain for the latter half of the competition.
U20 Lucy Underdown gained the other victory in the discus, Lucy was pleased to throw 44m52 and she beat the best of the rest by over 6m. Twin sister Amy teamed up with Lucy and was 4th in the B-string with just one throw of 27m23 before she had to sprint off to compete in the triple jump.
The track events started with the 400m hurdles, and Vicky Randall, although not too happy with her hurdling, still gained 6th spot in the A string while in the B string 1st year U20 Jodie Shaw competing in her first ever 400m hurdle race had a fantastic run to finish 3rd. She also made her debut in the 100 hurdles where she was 5th in 16.91s.
Sophie Copping was unlucky to fall in the 100m Hurdles A race but always a team player she got up and finished the race to gain a vital point, Sophie then raced back to the triple jump and was much happier with her third place there.
Nadine Terry was over the moon with her run in the 800m, her first since last September, as she smashed her personal best by over 2seconds to finish in 2m18.71. 400m runner Yasmin Joseph bravely agreed to fill the B string 800 for a point and after a solid run chased down the athlete in front of her to finish 4th.
The short sprints were contested by Charlotte Mackie, Vicky Randall and Yasmin and with 4 London clubs in the league points were always going to be hard to come by. It was a measure of how strong the opposition was that Charlotte found herself squeezed into 8th place in the 200m in spite of running a brilliant bend and finishing with a time of 26.44s.
Natalie Gray and Cathy Harvey doubled up in the 1500m and 3000m. Natalie had a brilliant run in her main event the 3000m where she finished 2nd in 10m00.7 while Cathy, who trains for 10,000m, also had her best run at 3000m landing 4th spot in 11m13.55. The girls then had a short rest before grabbing a few more points in the 1500m.
Lindsey Christie was annoyed with herself in the 400m as she felt she didn’t go off hard enough to start with, but in an impressive display of strength over the last 120m she ran down quite a few athletes in front of her to finish in 4th.
Another new girl Tracy Cunningham led off both relay teams. She was joined in the 4 x 100m by Lindsey, Yasmin and Charlotte. The girls stormed round the track in 50.06s, an amazing average of 12.5s per leg, and with Charlotte on the anchor leg fighting her way down the home straight it was an exciting finish that saw M&M in 3rd place.
The 4 x 400m relay was no less exciting or impressive as Tracy, Vicky, Nadine and Lindsey fought their way to 4th place. It is almost certain that if Lindsey, on the anchor leg, had another 5 metres she would have stormed into 3rd place as they were a mere 4/100ths of a second behind Thames Valley Harriers at the finish.
The team is now looking forward to the 2nd match in Bedford in July and hoping that they will be able to gain the few extra points needed to pull them up to 5th place.