Gateshead Harriers Open Medal Meeting

Nine Morpeth Harriers were in competitive action at the Gateshead Harriers
Open Medal meeting, held at Gateshead Stadium on Sunday 24th April.

Katie Hilton in the Under 17 Women’s 100m, made a very promising start to the new track campaign,
when she produced new figures of 13.5s, when finishing fourth.
Fellow Morpeth Harrier Hannah Brown also competed here, finishing as tenth fastest with 13.94s.

Brown’s appetite for early season competition in her first outdoor outing in her new age group, 
also led her to take on the rigours of 80m Hurdles for the first time, and saw her finish second in 12.8s,
just ahead of club colleagues Hannah Priest and Becky Foster.

Priest was also tackling the 80m Hurdles for the first time as an Under 17,
and finishing third in 13.2s was certainly an encouraging start,
and club newcomer Foster can also take much pleasure from finishing fourth in 14.2s.

Hannah Brown also competed in her first 200m for nearly two years,
and she set new figures of 29.6s, when finishing fifth.

Becky Foster also showed a keen eye for competition,
when finishing second in the Under 17 Women’s Long Jump, with a best of 3.70m.

Morpeth Harriers other track specialist in action was Kofi Jeje Avornyo,
who was having his first taste of outdoor athletics for the club.
He was seventh fastest in the Under13 Boys 100m with 15.1s,
and 30.4s in the 200m gave him fourth place.

Morpeth Harriers also had some very prominent Field throwing specialists in action.
Paul Reed coached Craig Charlton and Andrew Knight pulled off good
victories in the Senior Men’s and Under 15 Boys Shot Putt.

Charlton, making his outdoor debut, Putted a good 11.85m in the Senior event,
inflicting a 67cm marginal defeat on former Morpeth Harrier Paul Corrigan,
now competing for Wallsend Harriers, whom he will no doubt come up against
in the forthcoming Northern Senior League competition, and possibly in others,
the new Morpeth acquisition certainly cuts a fine prospect on this standard of performance.

Other good news for Reed and his club, is the winning performance of Under 15 Boy Andrew Knight,
with his best of 11.81m, however it was the narrowest of margins of only 2cm from Durham City’s Luke Allen.
He had bettered his previous best by 77cm however.

Another throwing performance was by Ellie Burt, who finished second
in the Under 17 Women’s Shot Putt with her best of 9.27m

The clubs other performance on the day was by Under 17 Men’s Long Jumper David Thomas,
who was agonisingly just slightly short of his best with 5.62m, which gave him second place
 to Gateshead Harrier Joe Halpin, who produced a best of 6.01m.