With many of Doncaster’s distance runners attending a training camp in Falls Creek over the Christmas break, meant that the sprinters and field athletes needed to pick up the slack.
The open men didn’t disappoint, with the top 6 times in the 100m and 400m events being run by Doncaster athletes. Kevin Rassool showed his return to form after running 10.98sec and 48.39sec – the quickest times of the day in both events. The girls followed suit, with Courtney Yates running strongly to finish second in the open womans 100m with 13.12sec while the powerhouse trio of Abbey de la Motte, Katherine Katsanevakis and Bree Walker smashed the open woman’s 400m with Abbey cruising to victory in 55.99sec. Doncaster Juniors, Ben Macri, Zachary Nunis, Nicole Reynolds and Abbey Caldwell all ran well to receive podium finishes for the sprints in their respective age groups.
The saving grace in the distance events came from Chow Lui who ran a time of 4:10.9 to win the U/16 1500m event and Abbey Caldwell, who was able to better her next opponent by over 30 seconds in the U/14 girls event.
Chow Lui, Zach Nunis and Stephanie Larkin all backed up well after their track duties to all finish within the top 3 in the Long Jump for their respective age groups. David Firth and Peter Coumaros helped the team to some valuable points after finishing first and second in the Open Men’s Javelin while Breanna Large continued her good form to win the Open Woman’s event with a throw of 41.77m. Natasha Coumaros showed her strength by winning the U/18 girls Javelin with a throw of 30.43m and also finished second in the woman’s discus.
With just a single round of competition remaining before the State Shield Final – Doncaster is in a good position to have multiple teams compete at the finals with the top 2 teams in each region progressing through.