Report on the 1st British Athletics League meeting of 2007
at the City of Stoke Stadium

Basingstoke & Mid Hants AC Senior men got the season off to a great start with a convincing victory at Stoke. Dominating the Track events Basingstoke won by a clear 70 points over their rivals. The final match score saw Basingstoke & Mid Hants score 374 points, ahead of Kingston & Poly AC 303.5, Crawley AC 282, Notts AC 273, Medway & Maidstone AC 268, City of Stoke AC 257, Team Southampton 254.5 and Rugby & Northampton 174. This was all achieved with Ben Hazell and Dean Showler-Davies away representing Great Britain in an International Decathlon in Italy while Steve Turville was away on honeymoon.

There was double wins in sprints from Ben Ellis and Andy Blow with Ben winning the A 100m and 200m in 10.9s and 21.9s respectively while Andy took the B strings in 11.0s and 22.3s. Wins also came from Mark Berridge in the 400m with a good 48.9s and David Ragan in the 800m recording 1m53.3s in the process, while Jon Hutchins won the 5000m in a personal best of 15m02.8s. Phil Tulba again showed his experience taking the B 1500m, clocking 4m00.5s, while on the field Robbie Kite was the winner of the B High Jump with 1m 80cm.

It was Basingstoke’s consistency that gave the Team the big winning margin as the multi eventers again put in a series of good performances. John Dickenson scored well with a 2nd in the A Long Jump recording 6.78m, 2nd in the A Pole Vault with 4.10m and 3rd in the B Discus going out to 34.21m. Carl Marchment after being away in Canada for over a year returned to competition and again showed his alround quality both on the track and on the field. Starting with a 4th in the B 400m Hurdles recording a useful 61.3s, Carl went on to notch up 3rd in the B Triple Jump with 12.22m, 4th in the B 110m Hurdles being timed at 16.6s and 4th in the A Javelin with 51.72m. Under 20s Robbie Kite and Jack Bolton contributed well to the overall performance, Robbie adding to his win in the High Jump with 6th in the A 110mHurdles with 17.0s, 5th in the B Long Jump with 6.02m and 4th in the A Triple Jump recording 12.69m. Jack on the other hand leapt to 1.85m for 2nd in the A High Jump and threw 42.33m for 4th in the B Javelin.

Back on the track David Fry had a great day, with personal best performances in the 3000m Steeplechase for 2nd in the B string with 9m57.9s and 5th in the B string 5000m with a time of 16m29.2s. Another personal best came from Darryl May with a good performance of 9m44.2s for 3rd in the A string Steeplechase. In the A 1500m Rob Whittle missing from the team for some while scored well with a 2nd in 3m58.0s.

A stalwart of the Team, Simon Williams also came up trumps and scored the following, 4th A Hammer 38.62m, 2nd A Discus 42.21m and 3rd B Shot with 12.41m. The afternoon was finished off with a win in the 4x400m Relay with Mark Berridge anchoring the Team home.

Other results B 400m 5th Nick Bates 52.0s, B 800m 3rd Max Roberts 1m58.2s new PB,
B Pole Vault 4th Tony Higbee 2.40m retired injured, A Shot 4th Tony Higbee 12.55m,
B Hammer 5th Chris Berry 23.83m, 4x100m 2nd 43.3s.

See the complete results

Match report by Ian Byett
Pictures by Mike Ellis