Day 1

A very good Day One of the Glynis Nunn Shield and State Combined Events Championships at QE2 today.
The ever-consistent Tiana Solley having her first hitout for the season was pleased with a 1.71m High Jump effort on her way to a 3rd placed standing overall in the Open Women’s Heptathlon at the end of Day One.

Aidan Dallinger got his timetable wrong and with only a 10 minute warm-up still managed an 11.29 100m ahead of an enormous 400m PB of 51.29.

Newcomer Sam Shaw made an auspicious debut for Ashgrove Rangers with U13 National Qualifiers straight up of 12.70 for 100m and 59.71 for 400m.

Perry Croft also produced a handy 100m PB of 13.26.

Laura Bray (400m – 68.17), Katie Bray (1500m – 6:27.38) and Andrew Pfeffer (400m – 54.98) helped keep us in touch on the points table where the heavy recent racing schedule and holiday period kept the overall numbers down a bit.

The meet concludes with Day Two tomorrow – good luck to all athletes competing on the final day of track and field competition for 2023.

Day 2

It might have been the most inhospitable Heptathlon conditions imaginable but that didn’t stop Tiana Solley finishing third overall and a Silver Medal as second place out of the Queenslanders in the State Open Heptathlon Championship at QE2 today.

A good 5.51m Long Jump enabled Tiana to withstand the torrid conditions in the Javelin and then the 800m to round off another great performance over 5100 points.

Daniel Casey has been the most energetic student of the sport of anyone in their school days that I have ever encountered and after the positive news of a very strong ATAR score matching his intellect during the week it was great to see him record a strong PB of 2:04.23 in the 800m first up.

Also inspirational first-up was Seb Croke who stormed to victory in the B Grade 3000m after a long injury layoff with 9:39.86.

I also thought Laura Bray was very tenacious in her effort in the hot conditions in the 3000m to record 11:17.53.
Lindsay Dixon recorded a very good PB of 24.91 in the 200m with Andrew Pfeffer also running well with 23.36 seconds.

That’s where we leave track and field for 2023.

Like any year, there were some days that things went exceptionally well and some days that they didn’t but overall I take my hat off to this crop of young athletes whose level of effort and love for track and field is greater than any of the previous generations that I have witnessed.