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State League Round 8 saw us get our act back together, at least in terms of match report writing, so with no further ado...
Matt’s Women’s Report
In their infinite wisdom and without notice to any participating clubs, Athletics Victoria decided to run the steeplchase without the water jump last evening in a bid to revoultionise the sport. I suppose it’s only a form of cost cutting and that in this changing climate, we should be content with getting at least part of a product. The Bayside women took this to heart last night and put into practise such methods, co-ordinated, as usual, by a partly efficient management team.
Jeanette Bowles started the day in the triple jump, which due to rationalisation, became the Double Jump and involved only a hop and a jump phase. Lucky for us Jeanette still managed to produce another PB of 12.20+ and will obviously be spectacularly successful once the step phase is re-introduced.
Things always look up when management sees both Megan Peters and Shirley Hay out on the track for the 5k walk. Unfortunately for us, Megan injured herself with about eight laps to go and Shirley was also seen stepping off the track a lap or so later. AV were obviously smirking, knowing that their plans for athletics rationalisation were coming together.
With a bit of pre-planning, we were able to eliminate both the High and Jump components from one particular field event. This made scoring on the night a whole lot simpler for us.
Both the Hammer and Shot last night were thrown with partially hollowed out implements, as designed by the AV technical committee. Luckily, Gabrielle Neighbour and Bec Neilsen both stepped up to the plate and score us some valuable points. Ditto, the great Megan Boyes, whose PB of 43 plus metres at Ballarat the week before should be hoorahed. Unfortunately, last night’s Discus was measured with a tape measure that didn’t record metreage between 20m and 30m, so results are as yet uncertain.
The 100 metres saw management sweating as athletes who were expected to show didn’t while unxpected visits from new athletes were not able to be rewarded with competition in a pointscoring race. Apologies to Denise Caicedo who ran very strongly by invitation and helped us out in the relay later in the night. For the first of two occasions for the evening, Tamsyn Lewis was left as our sole competitor in the short sprints. She showed her versatility by competing the 94 metre straight in a touch over 12.30 seconds.
At the Pole Vault, Sarah Wilsthire, who was seen strongly campaigning for the elastic string to be used in competitions as part of the AV ‘Shortcuts Program’ , managed to finish with an equal pb of 3.35, and seems destined to go higher very soon.
Five 1500 metre runners. I’ll repeat. Five 1500 metre runners. Some things make you smile. Karen Thorp ran into a super quick pace over the first 400 metres and found herself off the Sarah Jamieson inspired pace. Unfortunately she was also well in front of the second group and left to complete the race pretty much running on her own. She still finished in just a tick over 4:30 and will benefit from the whole State League roller-coaster expereience. Our two designated runners in the second heat were Katie Seibold and Helena Montgomery. Recovering from an infection all week, Helena was unable to complete the event, whilst Katie (4.39ish) ran home strongly to finish just behind Leah Rogers, who ran by invite in the Glenhuntly colours. Always surprising to find out who is actually in your team. Hopefully, Leah will be in the all navy Bayside top next run out. Our fifth runner was Kate Harris who kept the theme of the night going by running something less than her usual 5k adventures. Hooray to Kate.
Sarah Dosen and Jeannette Bowles did the hard work and both finished a creditable second over the 7 flights in the sprint hurdles. Both girls managed to get their 9 strides in perfectly between flights.
Although I didn’t actually see anybody, and whilst I am sure that there was somebody there, something happened in the javelin. Now that’s good management.
One of the highlights of my life thus far, besides the time Allan Jeans called me ‘Big Fella’ at footy training one night, was managing to get a relay team together last night. Sarah, Tamsyn, Jeannette and Denise not only ran well, they ran fast. Sarah was a little slow out of the blocks but quickly came up to speed and managed to hand over to Tamsyn, who is probably best suited to the back straight. Jeanette managed to go out against all AV directives and actually run the third leg (AV proposed that the baton be couriered to the fourth athlete) before handing over to Denise, who just got pipped on the line. Denise, unfortunately finished a little lame, but will hopefully back for the next State League in two weeks.
With late minute withdrawals and the staging once again of the 400 on a school night, three of the greatest decathletes of our time, Jussie, Daley and Andre all managed to watch Tamsyn run around on her own in the Bayside colours at the end of the night. Pushed hard by Rene Robson, Tamsyn pulled away in the home straight and managed to finish in about 53 and a half seconds. A big thank you to her and all the other girls for their efforts on a night when things just didn’t quite seem to go right.
No State League next week as AV plan to sit down and work out just how the program can be cut down by converting the 5k into a shorter race involving both eggs and spoons. Good luck to all those heading off to Canberra - party capital of the ACT.
and Jussie had this to say
So that is what it is like to be a State League manager...I had nearly forgotten what it is like to sit down the bottom and talk (either rubbish or profound, life-changing observations - depending on what seat you were in) to the team and prowl the infield checking up on field event results.
There was no scoreboard to flash times and results up and doesn't that suck? Even SL starts to closely resemble interclub on a Monday (or Saturday) when it is hard to get excited beyond the hot dogs and sports drinks.
On the track there was a full complement of sprinters thanks to Aidan Schanssema and when I last left Justin Lewis he was threatening to burst into tears over what appeared to be a missing "transition" phase...go figure, I thought transitions were what they used to call those little radios. Arnold Pamphlis was his usual self and Aidan also showed that he is coming back to good form.
Tim "old man river" Crosbie broke 4 minutes, a state vets record and more than one young fella's heart in the 1500m. A great run, but sadly he was the lone Bayside athlete. Them's the breaks.
No steeplechaser on a night when we probably could have dug up a couple of qualifiers due to the lack of a water jump. But thats OK, 'cos Fuzz is still in the wings...
Paul Peulich spun and heaved in the hammer circle, as did Aaron Neighbour in the shot. Sadly, due to a bit of a stuff up, we had no javelin thrower...hopeless management if I do say so myself. Given that we have such a depth of throwers this shouldn't happen but nor should the selling of cold pies and we all know such travesties continue.
Liam and Tim both won their hurdle events and Paul Harland (invitation) in his second run over the big sticks was very impressive and is developing very quickly and further enhances our pool of hurdlers.
No walkers, but I did spy Simon Baker at interclub last week, so you never know...
The relay? We rocked! It was probably the best team we have fielded in the short relay and the changes were smoother than Tonza in his prime (for those who him, that is not an athletics reference).
What else?
Matt Brown threw the discus with great aplomb, but given that this report is so late, I can also report that the big guy threw two PBs at Glenhuntly on Saturday. Very well done, Matt.
Triple Jump? Three, count them, three athletes were eligible to compete for Bayside with Paul Groves and Simon Jacotine jumping by invite with Matt Cooter scoring the points. To have the invitation athletes is a great way of providing some added competition on the night and well done to all three (even though Grovsey did not manage to trouble the person with the tape!).
The 400s were one of the real highlights as it was great to see Disco Stu back in good form while Ash Mildenhall's last 20m was painful enough to watch that it may prevent me from ever running one again. Don't get me wrong, Ash ran brilliantly to win (in a PB?) but that last 20m after a blistering backstraight/bend must have felt like it was straight uphill. Well done also to Todd Andrews who stepped in at the last minute to run following some heavy training.
The team came a solid second to Essendon and we can look forward to the State Champs, the State League finals and finding Justin Lewis's little radio.
Results are here.
The last Report was Round 5.