Report on the 2nd British Athletics League meeting of 2007
at Southampton Stadium

Basingstoke & Mid Hants Athletic Club Senior Men’s Team continued their dominance of Division 3 of the British Athletics League with a convincing victory at Southampton. In the end such was their command of the match that the Team won by 55 points and during the afternoon notched up 12 individual A and B string wins along with both Relays. At the end of the afternoon Basingstoke & Mid Hants AC scored 383 points with Team Southampton 2nd with 328 points followed by Crawley AC 290, Medway & Maidstone 283, Notts AC 267, Kingston & Polytechnic 249, City of Stoke 194 and finally Rugby & Northampton 193. This now puts Basingstoke well clear at the top of the League and in line for promotion

Again Ben Ellis and Andy Blow were superb winners of the sprints, winning the A and B 100m in 11.0s and 11.2s respectively. Later they did the same in the 200m with times of 21.5s and 22.1s. Mark Berridge followed this with a 48.0s win the 400m finishing well clear of the field.

The return to the Team of Ben Hazell and Dean Showler-Davis made a big impact and they scored a lot of points. Ben Hazell started with the Pole vault finishing 2nd with a height of 4.40m and then followed this up with 3rd in the A High Jump with 1.90m, 2nd in the A 110m hurdles in 15.2s and 2nd in the B Shot putting 12.82m. Dean Showler-Davis on the other hand started by winning the Long Jump with 6.61m, followed by a win in the B 110m Hurdles recording 15.9s, taking 2nd in the B High Jump going over 1.80m and finishing with a win in the B Javelin with a throw of 48.43m.

Another athlete to score well was John Dickinson, starting with the Pole Vault, John went over 4.10m to secure a B string victory and matched this by winning the B Long Jump with 6.59m, and then came a 3rd in the B Triple Jump with 12.13m. Carl Marchment chipped in with his share of points starting on the track by finishing 2nd in the B 400m Hurdles with 59.6s. The Triple Jump saw Carl finish 4th in the A string with 12.34m and he matched this position in the Javelin going out to 49.65m.

Rafer Joseph returned after missing the first fixture, in a good quality Hammer competition Rafer had settle for 5th in the A string with 42.29m but then came 2nd in the A Discus with 43.75m. Simon Williams completed his usual trio of events with 6th in the B Hammer 34.13m, 1st B Discus with 42.42m and 4th A Shot recording 12.88m

The middle distance runners also scored well, Jon Hutchins stepped down in distance from  usual to the 800m and came up with a new personal best of 1m55.8s for 3rd in the B string. While team mate Steve Turville finished 7th in the A event with 1m56.5s. With a fast finish Dave Ragan placed 2nd in the A 1500m in 3m55.1 and in the B event Max Roberts was 6th in 4m10.7s. There was two personal bests in the 3000m Steeplechase, Darrel May recording 9m41.6s for 2nd in the A string and 9m52.0s for David Fry who won the B string with this performance. David then went on the finish 7th in the 5000m with 16m33.4s.  Nick Bates also picked up points in the 400m Hurdles finishing 6th in the A string recording 58.8s and 6th in the B 400m flat with 52.3s.

The meeting ended on a high note as both Relay Teams won, the 4x100m team recording 42.7s. While 4x400m Relay team smashed the Club record and were just 2 seconds outside of the League Record winning in 3m13.4s with a quartet of Ben Hazell, Andy Blow, Ben Ellis and Mark Berridge.

Match report by Ian Byett
Pictures by Mike Ellis