King’s Athletics is Racing Ahead

Athletics goes from strength to strength at King’s: last week saw five pupils qualify for Regional Championships, 22 pupils for County Championships, and all four teams at the ESSA Track and Field Cup Competition progressed to the Midlands Finals.

The Athletics Combined Events Championships, a junior heptathlon, took place on Monday, with 10 King’s athletes competing in the Junior Boys and Junior Girls (Years 8 & 9) and the Inter Boys and Inter Girls (Years 10 & 11) competitions.  Three boys won medals in the Junior competition: Ollie T won the competition with an overall score of 1791 points; Roman W finished second and Ethan W was third.  Ollie W-J took gold in the Inter Boys’ competition and Esther G took the silver medal in the Inter Girls’ competition. Our Junior Girls just missed out on the medals, but they all showed great improvement in this new event. Our five medallists have now qualified to represent Hereford and Worcestershire at the Regional Championships on the 24^th of June in Derby and we wish them every success.

We also achieved remarkable success in the U15 District Championship, which took place on Wednesday this week. Our Upper Fourth and Lower Remove pupils (Years 8 and 9) came away with wins in 15 out of the 23 events, an impressive achievement when you realise the competition includes all schools in Worcester City.  22 athletes have qualified to compete for Worcester City in the County Championships on the 10^th of June, with seven athletes qualifying in multiple events.

Furthermore, four teams represented King’s at the ESSA Track and Field Cup competition, which took place on Thursday, having been postponed by the thunderstorms the week before. This is a unique event, where every member of the team must compete in both one track event and one field event, which adds an extra dimension to the competition, particularly when it comes to the relays.

Throughout the event there were many individual outstanding performances, with everyone giving their best to achieve some phenomenal results. In each event, the athletes score points dependent on their time or distance and these individual scores are added together to give a team score, which can be compared with teams across the country. All four of our teams finished second in the County, and when the results were compared to those in the Midlands, we were ranked second in the Inter Boys , third in the Inter Girls, fourth in the Junior Girls and thirteenth in the Junior Boys. Collectively these are the best results King’s teams have ever achieved and they see the IB, IG and JG teams progress to the Midlands ‘A’ Final and the JB team progress to the Midlands ‘B’ Final. These results are an immensely impressive achievement, as the area includes schools from across Buckinghamshire, Staffordshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Shropshire, Warwickshire and the West Midlands and includes approximately 100 in total.

Pupil numbers have been brilliant at training, and it is fantastic to see their hard work paying off, with such brilliant results on the track and in the field.

Director of Sport, Mrs Miller-Symonds added, “It has been a busy start to the term for King’s athletes, with pupils involved in a range of different competitions on top of our normal Saturday programme. Athletes have shown excellent commitment to training and are working hard to improve in their events and this is certainly clear to see in competitions. It is fantastic to see how far the Athletics Programme has come over the past seven years.”