Andover AC played host to match two of the Wessex League season with visiting clubs from Portsmouth, Salisbury, Winchester, Newbury and Fleet competing.

This was always going to be a tough fixture given the number of athletes competing from the bigger clubs however, the fine weather brought out the best in a number from the small Andover squad with a host of new personal bests, a new club record plus a new league record achieved on the day.

The U13 girls 70m hurdles started the day off and Sarah Brett took third in the A string race while Tillie McClutchie won the B string race with a PB of 13.0s. Tillie was in action straight after in the long jump where she produced another PB of 4.05m in finishing second overall before a fifth in the 100m.

Sarah Brett produced a PB of 29.20s in winning the 200m A string race and in the 800m a well judged race saw another winning PB performance. Jessica Robinson is starting to realise her potential in the high jump where she produced a PB of 1.38m in coming second overall before running a PB of 12.90s in the non-scoring 70m hurdles. Abbie Mills has shown steady improvement this season in the shot and another solid set of throws resulted in a PB of 5.86m. Abbie also ran a PB of 16.50 in the non-scoring 100m.

Also in action for the U13 girls was Brooke Henderson who produced a PB of 1.10m in the high jump and Caitlin Wiseman with PB’s in the 100m (15.70s) and 200m (33.40s) Although the U13 boys did not produce as many PB’s there were a number of good performances from the youngsters. Kai Henderson ran a PB of 14.60s in finishing third in the 100m while Tom Edmunds was fifth in the B string race and third in the 200m B race but there was a winning performance from James McDermott (28.50s) in the A race. Taylor Anstie ran well in his first 800m race to take second in the A string.

Only three boys made up the U15s where Tom Hewson was second in the javelin with a best of 27.94m with Lewis Reed throwing 17.64m in the B string before coming fourth in the 1500m.

Matt Cooper was making his debut for the club on the track and he ran solid races in both the sprints, taking fourth in both the 100m and 200m.

The club has a depth of talent in the U15 where Holly Mills continues to shine on the track.

She comfortably won the 75m hurdles but it was her performance in the 300m that she will remember. Running this distance for only the second time Holly smashed the old club record by 2.5s and also broke the Wessex League record with the time also ranking her first in the UK. Darcie Henderson won the B string 300m and produced a solid round of high jumps to take third with a PB of 1.40m. Jasmine McClutchie was in double winning form in the sprints where she produced great runs in very close races in both the 100m (13.10s) and 200m (16.90s) and also made her debut in the long jump finishing just 2cm behind the winner. Meghan Corney was also in action in the 100m B string with a PB before winning the B string long jump of 4.09m and the quartet of girls then produced an impressive 4x100m relay performance where they won by a wide margin in a time of 51.9, just 0.5s off the league record.

The other U15 girls all performed well in their events, Elizabeth Ball (high jump), Natalie Wilson (75m hurdles, 200m PB of 32.30) and Charlotte Harrison (800m).

The U17 was the club’s strongest part of the squad where they finished first out of the six teams.

In the 100m, Keiran Nicholls was fourth in the A string, while Nikko Hunt won the B string in 11.90s. Tom Lewis took second in the A race with a PB with Sam Sears third in the B string. Tom then went one better in winning the A string 400m in with Ben Reed second in the B string.

Earlier in the day Ben produced a great run in winning the 1500m with a PB of 4min 35 and the club’s middle distance runners were also in form in the 800m with Callum Duff taking the A string with a PB and Archie McKellar the B race in 2. Hunt was also in winning form in the long jump where Max Robinson made his debut taking second in the B string. In the throws, Robert Horne was second in the shot (10.74m), Nicholls won the A string discus (29.81m) with Horne winning the B string and in the javelin, Horne was second in the A string with a PB of 39.69m while Matthew Coombes won the B string with a best of 34.41m.

At the end of a tough day of competition Andover finished in a respectable fourth place.