The Walden family travelled down to Essex over the Bank Holiday Weekend for the Southend City Community Open. Between the three of them they came back with quite the medal haul. Three golds and three silvers.
Everly, U12: two events, two golds
Everly won both events she entered. Gold in the long jump with a big PB of 4.28m, and gold in the 75m in 11.13 seconds, run into a 2.1 headwind. It can be very windy at Southend.
Seb, U8: one better than last year
Youngest Walden, Seb, came away with two silvers, in the U8 50m in 9.78 seconds and in the mini howler with a throw of over 21 metres. His dad’s verdict was that he went one better than last year.
If Seb looks familiar, that’s because he’s the boy on our latest Funetics post. Funetics is where our juniors aged 5 – 7 start.
Dad raced too
Ash competed too and took gold in the 100m and silver in the 400m. The 100m came in at 12.72 seconds into a ferocious 3.5 headwind, off what he admits was a bad start, and the 400m in 57.33 battling the winds in the stadium too.
His own assessment of the 400m was that he went too conservative through the middle of the race for fear of tying up over the last hundred. He is planning to focus on the 100m and 200m for next season, with the view that his ceiling is higher over the shorter distances, with the odd 400m for fun!
Three age groups, one club
What is really inspiring about these performances is not really the medal count. It is that a funetics age child, a junior squad athlete and a masters athlete all competed on the same afternoon, in the same vest, and all enjoyed it.
This is the club we are working hard to build. Somewhere you can start enjoying athletics at five in funetics, transition gradually towards age group athletics at U10, and keep competing for enjoyment or for medals for as long as you want to from U12 upwards. There should be no point at which athletics stops being for you.
Congratulations to Everly, Seb and Ash on a great weekend of competition.
Want to give track and field athletics a go?
We run Funetics for 5 to 7 year olds, age group athletics for U10 to U18, and adult sessions for ages 18 to 88, across Bubwith, Tadcaster, Sherburn in Elmet and York. Sessions are led by England Athletics licensed coaches who are Enhanced DBS checked.
Find out more about our junior places or see where and when we train for all age groups.
