Georgie Bean clinched the South of England U15 javelin title at Chelmsford on Sunday to ensure that club young athletes did not return empty-handed from these Regional Championships

The javelin thrower’s 49.55m effort was close to his recent 50m+ personal best which currently ranks him second in the UK.  But any further medal hopes for coach Sam Harrison’s squad were dashed as Bonne Buwembo was unable to defend his u17 men’s title – his finger injury sustained when he threw a club record at Woodford in April has just been diagnosed as a break, so he faces a further lay-off. And rising u15 star Kike Oniwinde missed out on a javelin final due to a family half-term holiday.  Bradley Burr was the only other club javelin thrower on show, finishing fifth behind Georgie Bean in the u15 boys’ competition.

Eugene Ayanful had a successful weekend, but just missed out on medals in both sprints. He ran faster than ever before with a superb wind-aided 22.07s in the U17 men's 200m but was out of the medals in fourth.  On Saturday he clocked a legal PB off 11.05s, for fifth in the shorter sprint.

Another PB and fourth place came from Matt Bloy, whose 1:57.85s clocking for 800m was a three-tenths of a second improvement on his county silver-medal winning performance.

Sam Hill was fifth in the U15 Girls' discus (21.33m) and seventh in the shot (7.77m). Her older sister Nicola improved her fastest 80m hurdles time to a wind-assisted 11.89s, finishing sixth in the u17 category but a timetable clash meant she had to rush across to the long jump straight after her final.  Her enforced lack of preparation played havoc with her run up and all her three attempts were well short of the take-off board with a best of 4.91m and a potential medal which would have resulted if Nicola had repeated her Essex Championship gold jump of 5.33m slipped away.

There was a more spectacular improvement on Saturday from Chris Warden who sliced five seconds off his week-old 400m hurdles PB, to place fifth in the U17M event. Chris’s 58.83s clocking was the fastest by a club U17 athlete for 10 years and the sixth fastest ever. Chris returned on Sunday to contest the 100m hurdles to equal his PB of 14.40s placing sixth in his heat. It was a performance that would have won silver in the Midlands championships but it was not good enough for a Southern Counties final place.

Frankie Calder improved her PB to 41.54s in qualifying for the U17 Women's 300m final but felt unwell and did not compete in the final itself while Catrina McAuliffe battled the wet conditions on Saturday to place 8th in the WU17 discus.