A SELECT group of Royston athletes from Greneway and Meridian School made their way to Hemel Hempstead for the County Athletics Championships last Saturday.

All athletes involved had already performed to a high standard to make the necessary qualifying standards but would need to raise their games again.

All 10 athletes competed superbly in high-quality competition across 17 events and they all reached their respective finals. Seven new personal bests were achieved as well as two new school records on their way to a haul of nine medals.

Greneway’s Ed Shannon and Brooke Racher both won gold medals in the javelin event. Shannon reached a distance of 33.44 metres, a personal record and school record, while Racher reached 20.29m, a PB as well as making the all-time list.

Shannon also won bronze in the 100-metre sprint with a time of 13.8 seconds.

Lauren Freeman won the silver in the 100m with a time of 13.9secs.

Matt Houghton finished in 2 minutes and 26 seconds in the 800-metre race to win the silver medal while R Thomas (1,500m) and B Seabrook (javelin) both picked up bronze medals.

Meridian’s A Cooper won gold in the 300m with a time of 43.7secs while Cemal Ramadan took the bronze in the long jump with a distance of 5.42m.

Racher (javelin), Shannon (javelin), Houghton (800m) and Freeman (100m) have all been selected for the Inter-county Championships on July 31 for their efforts in this event.

Cooper has been selected for Hertfordshire in the English Schools’ Championships in July.