Those in bold are in my squad.
PB’s for Wrench-Doody; Watkins in both the 200 & 400 (45 mins apart); James; Tronnolone (18yo) & for Baker (16yo) it was a track PB.
Hard to quantify as they are all at different stages of their careers - some will improve more than others due to their “athletic age”.
Alicia has improved from a high 25s 200m (25.7/25.8) runner last season to running 24.19 the other night. She ran 7.49 for 60m last Saturday. Last season she would have been in around 8.00s shape. She has had only one decent winter prep so to come this far in one anad a half seasons is phenomenal.
Clay’s previous PB was 21.64 (Hobart, TAS in Jan 2008) so this is a great break through. This is his 5th season with us and he has improved over 200m every year. His previous 400m PB was 46.99 in January 2007. He stagnated a little last year with a best of 47.07 (hamstring issues in Nov/Dec 07) but has gotten quicker over the 100/200 this year and this should reflect more positively as we eke the distance out in training for the next 2 months. 46.90 for a first up 400m after the pro running campaigns at Bay Sheff & Burnie augurs well for some quicker 400’s in the weeks ahead.
Robbie James’ season best for 200m in 2007/08 was 22.65. His previous best from a few years ago was 22.46. (Although I think this may have had a strong tail wind). The 21.98 is a huge PB for him. Interestingly he retired, disillusioned with the sport and took up kickboxing. In July I coaxed him into trying something different and he has responded superbly. He is still raw in a lot of ways so there is still a lot of improvement to make.
As much as I’d love to get down there, we’re not going to Hobart.
I’m focussing on the Australia Cup (Brisbane; 7th Feb) at the moment - hoping to have the 4 Burnie relay runners, James, Boden, Wrench-Doody & Watkins in the SA/TAS team.
Peter Fortune and the SASI Athletics rep are picking the team.
The events are: (one athlete per individual event)
100m, 400m, 1500m, 4x100m, HJ & LJ for the women.
100m, 400m, 800m, 4 x 100m, LJ & Jav for the men.
Alicia has not yet run a 100m race this summer so needs to be beat the state champ who has a season’s best of 11.93 tomorrow at interclub to secure the 100m spot. Should be a very interesting race tomorrow!
Watkins should get the 400m spot and Boden the 800m spot. James hopefully in the 4 x 100m relay.
Unfortunately, I don’t suspect there wil be too many Tassie athletes in the team.
Alicia Wrench Doody 11.65 (+2.9) beat Leanne Hodge who ran 11.86. So Alicia will run the Aust Cup 100m.
No Tristan Thomas for the Aust Cup as he apparently is now concentrating on the 400m Hurdles.
I think the team will be something like this:
100m K Sheehy SA
400m C Watkins SA
800m J Boden SA
4 x 100m: R James SA, Watkins, Sheehy, ?.
LJ: ?
Jav: ?
WOMEN
100m A Wrench-Doody SA
400m H Noack SA
1500m D McFarlane TAS
4 x 100m: L Hodge SA, Wrench-Doody, Noack, M Whiley TAS.
LJ: ?
HJ: Kylie Montgomery SA
Grant Page would need to run under 1-50.7 over 800m pretty soon to get selected ahead of Boden.
Street might get the women’s LJ spot as we are light on for long jumpers in SA.
Nationally ranked SA multi’s athletes Lauren Foote (hep) and Jarad Sims (dec) are in NZ for a multis comp that weekend so unfortunately that robs the team a bit. Foote has gone 1-82 in the HJ and 6-04 in the LJ this season. Sims throws well over 50m (jav) on a good day.
I think Henry Frayne, an SA athlete training in Victoria will do the men’s LJ (he’s a 7m plus man). He also has a manual 10.6 for 100 this season so he helps with the relay.
Men’s jav is real problem - no Peacock or Sims means we might have to look at a 48m man from SA.
