Stratford AC off to impressive start in Heart of England League

STRATFORD AC youngsters produced an excellent all-round display as they shared top spot in the Heart of England League Division One opener at Telford.

The top division is extremely competitive and although there were gaps in the Stratford teamsheets, causing a drop in valuable points, a superb combined effort throughout the various age groups surprised the team managers when the final results revealed that Stratford finished the match in joint top spot along with Coventry Godiva and Amber Valley.

Perhaps the most impressive statistic that came out the match was the outstanding results in the javelin where all the throwers – Evie Savage, Josh Roberts, Millie Leighton, Emily Wild, Ollie Wear, Emily Curtis, Charlotte Gravelsons, Freddie Clemons, Aran Woodger and Lewis Byng – won their events and Kate Richardson was third.

The club’s lead throws coach Sandy Green has done a great job leading the development of the youngsters and said: “We’ve got a really good, hard-working and enthusiastic group of throwers throughout the club and it’s great to see them all throwing so well and so early in the season.”

The success across the age groups was reflected in Stratford high jumpers U13 Lucy Lane and U15 Male Adam Farrow, U13 Josh Roberts, javelin and U17 Lewis Byng, shot and javelin winning athletes of the match in four of the six age groups.

“It was disappointing that that there were so many athletes unavailable but the upside is that it opens up opportunities for others and we saw some excellent individual performances with loads of PBs set,” said under-15 team manager Mike Sheppard.

“Particularly pleasing was seeing new faces like under-13s Josh Roberts and Lucy Lane scoring 23 out of a possible 24 points and performing so strongly on their league debut and established performers like Lewis Byng and Adam Farrow taking maximum points in their events.

“This is a tough division against some big and very well organised clubs,” he added.

“While having some really strong individual athletes helps us enormously, just looking at the results and all the B strings where we picked up good points shows that we were joint winners primarily because of our strength in depth and terrific team spirit.

“It’s a really good start but we need to keep it going for the remaining matches if we are to sit in contention for winning the championship again.”

Click here for full results.