TAVISTOCK College were celebrating after three of their pupils won medals at the prestigious English Schools’ Track & Field Championships in Birmingham.
Tegan Brown won a gold medal, while there were silvers for Phoebe Milburn and Nicolas Maczugowski at the Commonwealth Games stadium.
There was also a gold medal for Plymouth College’s Nubia Evans-Shields, who has now won three consecutive English Schools’ discus title.
Evans-Shields, who at club level competes for City of Plymouth AC, won the junior girls’ competition in 2001 before winning the intermediate girls’ title last year.
And she comfortably retained that title with a throw of 42.01m, which was nearly seven metres further than anyone else threw on the day.
Tavistock’s Brown joined her in becoming a national champion by winning the junior girls’ hammer competition.
Brown, who had come fifth last year, threw 43.24m to win by nearly one-and-a-half metres from Hertfordshire’s Keira Lake-Bryan.
In the same event, Devonport High School’s Hazel Stead came eighth with a throw of 34.21m.
Brown’s club and school team-mate Phoebe Milburn already knew what it was like to stand on the podium at the English Schools’ Championship after she won bronze two years ago as a junior girl.
But Milburn went one better this year with a silver medal in the intermediate girls’ hammer competition. She threw 50.98m and was only beaten by Sussex’s Alice Howe.
Milburn’s club colleagues Louisa Hess (Mount Kelly) and Ella Patterson (Stover) also competed in the same hammer final, with Hess finishing seventh with 45.72m and Patterson coming 10th with 41.95m.
Maczugowski finally got the English Schools’ medal he craved by comfortably winning silver in the intermediate boys’ 400m hurdles.
He eased through his heat on Friday before running a controlled race in the final to make sure he made the podium and secure a place in the English Schools’ team for the SIAB Home International in Grangemouth.
Maczugowski, who at club level represents City of Plymouth AC, clocked 55.45 seconds in the final to finish behind Kent’s Cheyne West. Maczugowski, who finished strongly, was more than one-and-a-half seconds ahead of the third placed athlete.
Evans-Shields and Milburn will also be in the English Schools’ team for the SIAB International in Scotland as the top two in each event at intermediate level earn selection.
Ivybridge College’s Adam Dingley (City of Plymouth) could not have come closer to winning a medal. He just missed out in an incredibly tight intermediate boys’ 100m hurdles final by 0.05 of a second. It looked like he was going to medal but he lost his balance in the closing stages and fell over the line.
Despite his heavy fall, he clocked 13.40 seconds. Just 0.1 of a second separated second place from fifth, with the South West filling three of the top five spots, with Toby Wright third and Joshua Taylor fourth.
Another City of Plymouth athlete, Poppy Northcott (Torpoint) also claimed a top five finish in the intermediate girls’ 300m hurdles. Representing Cornwall, she eased through the heats with a season’s best run of 44.28 seconds before clocking 45.91 in a strong final.
Tavistock AC’s Charlotte Doney, who was another athlete to be representing Cornwall, came sixth in the junior girls’ discus with a throw of 28.64m.
Club colleague and Ivybridge College’s Owen Fileman was eight in the intermediate boys’ hammer with 41.88m, while fellow Tavistock AC throwers Evie Palmer was ninth in the junior girls’ javelin with 31.31m, Orla White was 10th in the junior girls’ discus with 24.56m and Hannah Walker was 10th in the senior girls’ hammer with 32.06m.
There was fourth consecutive top-eight finish for Devonport High School’s Ella Isaias in the senior girls’ high jump. The City of Plymouth athlete leaped 1.63m.
Mount Kelly’s Rory Summers (Tavistock AC) smashed his PB in the intermediate boys’ 400m to go under the magical 50-second barrier for the first time. He clocked 49.95 seconds, which was nearly a second quicker than he had run before. However, it was not quite enough to reach the final with 11 runners all going under 50 seconds.
Joe Wake (Tavistock College) and David Oldfield (Coombe Dean) both enjoyed encouraging English Schools’ debuts in the junior boys’ 100m. Both battled really hard for a place in the final, both clocking 11.59 seconds in their heats. They were both ranked in the top 14 in one of the largest fields at the championships.
In the senior boys’ 100m, City of Plymouth’s Connell McCarthy, representing Cornwall, clocked 11.51 seconds.