Athletics Essendon won the inaugural AVSL Premier Division championship, defeating Glenhuntly and Diamond Valley. It was a great day’s comp with Glenhuntly flying out of the blocks to take a 2000 point lead.
The tide turned with the 3000m event. Lachlan Attard ran a superb race to win in 8:59. Lachie had just flown in from the US on Thursday; he also ran a sharp 800m. The 3K race was dominated by six Essendon runners who stayed tightly bunched making, lap scoring a nightmare. Archie Noakes (3rd in 9:03), Marco Pitisano (4th, 9:05), Bashir Nabdinoor (5th, 9:09) and Brodie Thrum (8th, 9:15) just managed to lead home veteran Damien Bruneau. Damien is in full training for the London marathon and had completed 130km during the week but still managed his best ever 3000m time with 9:21. These six runners earned the club 2900 points. In the same event Lauren Connell ran superbly to come 2nd with a PB of 9:55.5 and 508 points! Essendon had 12 more runners in the next couple of heats pulling in over 3000 points.
Once Essendon took the lead we were never headed again, despite nervous moments in the stand, and ran away winners by 8500 points from Glenhuntly with Diamond Valley a close third. Mornington (39923) defeated Chilwell (15756) to move into Premier Division next season.
We had 89 athletes compete on the day, many doing 4 events plus a relay. This is what it takes to win this competition. The other clubs will catch on to this and push hard next year to bring us down.
Thank you
A big thank you to all the athletes and parents who lap scored or helped at the high jump. Without club helpers there isn’t a competition. A special thanks to Sam Healy. Sam has been junior boys Team Manager for a number of years and keeps on top of everything that happens. He kept the other team managers up to date with which athletes had entered what events, allowing them to hassle athletes into getting entered in time and into events they were qualified to do. Thanks to the other team managers; Adrian Wrout (girls), Steve Murphy (open women), Danny Hawksworth (open men) and Brian Anderson (40+ teams).
Well done also to Christian Knox who jumped in as a guide for Collingwood’s TF11 athlete Andrew Close in their 4x100m relay.
Team Scores:
M40 15227 points
M16 13792
FOP 6711
M18 6490
M14 5126
MOP 4154
M20 3906
F16 3312
F18 2821
F40 2691
F14 1837
Highest Point Scorers: (Over 1000 pts)
Kevin Healy 1577 points
Lachlan Attard 1516
Jack Walsh 1495
Harry Orr 1375
Duncan Knox 1312
Richard Brophy 1305
Thomas Sims 1301
Brian Anderson 1234
Danny Hawksworth 1208
Jonathan Neethling 1199
Archie Noakes 1169
Jannik Ernst 1108
Spase Veljanovski 1040
Emily Newton 1018
Top Individuals (Over 500 points in an event):
Mark Giglio M40 200m 23.92 s
Anna Kasapis F40 800m 2:14.5
Lauren Connell FOP 3000m 9:55.5
Lachlan Attard M18 3000m 8:59
Archie Noakes M16 9:03.6
Kevin Healy M16 Hammer 51.80m
Jack Walsh M16 High Jump 1.90m
Harry Orr M14 High Jump 1.80m
Maria Strong F40 Seated shot put 5.97m
Angus Wood M20 Triple Jump 14.80m (PB)
Hazel Lockwood F14 Triple jump 10.42m
Madelaine Koelman, Ilana Grande, Jennifer Mendes, Catherine Mendes 4 x 100m 50.40sec
Congratulations to everyone who competed on Saturday; it was great to see all the smiling faces on the podium, looking like ONE CLUB! The main thing is we all enjoyed the day.
