Our junior section continues to flourish and in terms of both in quantity and quality with our young athletes competing at every distance from 60 to 3000m on the track, at cross country and up to 10k on the road for some of our older juniors.  We also have hurdlers, long and high jumpers, discus, shot and javelin throwers, tri-athletes and bi-athletes.

We have a very hard working group of coaches that run 7 regular groups every week (2 on Monday, 2 or 3 on Tuesdays and 2 on Thursdays) plus the occasional ad hoc session, very supportive parents and most importantly a dedicated hard working group of young athletes that are supportive of each other and are a delight to coach.  I think our juniors set a shining example.

I know from spending so much time with our young athletes that they are inspired by seeing each other succeed.  Many were excited and inspired when they saw Liz on the TV running so well at the Manchester 10k.

Our juniors have continued to have considerable success since the last issue of ROTM which is always reported in the local press and on our notice board which is kept up to date with pictures of our juniors in action so I will not detail them all here but some highlights in recent months include:-

Sophie Bohannon finishing the Mid Lancs XC season as 3rd under 13 girl.  Sophie was also selected to represent Lancashire in the Inter Counties XC as a result of her 2nd place in the Lancashire Championships. 

In the Lancashire Track and Field Championships where we had 3 athletes competing in 8 events with 8 PBs between them in hurdles, high and long jump, 100m, 200m, discus and shot.  Our young athletes again earned medals  with Rebecca Fisher’s 21.95m in the under 17 discus was good enough to take bronze with Maddy Markham in only her 2nd ever race over the distance taking bronze in the under 17 3000m.

4 of our juniors entered the Power of 5k race at Lancaster on 29th of March and all ran PBs with Maddy Markham finishing 1st in 19:16, Sophie Bohannon 3rd in 19:27, Brogane Murphy 14th in 22:03 and Laura Bremner 16th in 22:17.

13 year old Frankie Ball’s first love is football but when he is available for track and field he inevitably runs well picking up points for Lytham in the Mid Lancs league at 200m and 400m where he has pbs of 28.3 and 65.6 which is faster than most of our seniors.

Maddy Markham’s time of 19:05 at Lytham parkrun on 20th April makes her Lytham’s fastest ever junior parkrunner. 

On a typically very windy March day on Blackpool Prom Jayden Richardson, Lewis Bentley and Finlay Hughes took the first 3 places in the Blackpool Festival of Running 2k.
਀㰀戀爀㸀 Under 17 athletes Laura Bremner and Adhamh Holton making their debut for Lytham’s home fixture of the inter club road league.  Laura finished first junior female and Adhamh as 6th junior male.

The success of our young athletes does not go unnoticed by other local clubs and by the class mates of our young athletes.  I get phone calls and emails from parents saying as much and asking where some of our young athletes learn to run, jump and throw so well.  The photos on our strategically placed notice board (just outside the gym) have also prompted enquiries.

As usual thanks to all the hard work of our junior coaches Dave Whyman, Maria, Dave Wood, Mel, Joanna, Debbie, Rebecca, Graham and Ross who to takes a group out on Mondays (as Graham and I can no longer keep up!).   Also to several of our parents who often help out when needed.