With the final round of the 2013 Shield competition hosted at the unfamiliar track in Epping over the weekend, Doncaster Athletics Club needed as many of its faithful athletes to participate, to ensure we finished highly on our respective age group premiership ladders. With many age groups currently sitting in the top 3 positions overall, and only the top 2 teams from each age group qualifying for the Shield finals in April 2014, this was a good opportunity to finish the year on a high.
The structure of the Shield competition focuses more on quantity rather than quality; trying to motivate participation across all of the offered events. It was good to see all DAC athletes trying out a few more additional and unfamiliar events just to ensure they received those extra few points.
As always, DAC showed strength in the track events, with not only filling every event with the maximum amount of athletes but also performed especially well. Congratulations to Andrew Ney (U/16 boys) and Courtney Yates (Open Woman’s) for winning their respective age group 100m events and Georgia Feben for winning the Open Woman’s 400m event. Distance runners: Bronte Gange and Abbey Caldwell both were a class above the rest, each winning their respective 1500m events.
Doncaster AC was well represented in the field, especially in the open woman’s discus with 8 girls lining up to throw. It’s always encouraging seeing such a strong DAC representation, congratulations to Kiandra Lane and Breanna Large who ended up finishing first and second in the event. In the U/18 woman’s discus, Natasha Coumaros represented the Coumaros family well by winning the event with a throw of 27.62m. In the woman’s javelin, Breanna continued her dominance finishing first with a throw of 33.93m with Charmaine Smith finishing in second.
Congratulations to both the open men’s and woman’s team for finishing in 1st position by days end with the mens U/18 team finishing in 2nd position. Special mention to Kristen Walburg who competed in 9 events throughout the day; she’s helped her team keep 2nd spot on the premiership ladder.