Written by Alex Seftel
City of Sheffield and Dearne and Chelmsford AC will compete in the National Athletics League Premiership next season after finishing first and second in the Promotion Match at Oxford Horspath on Saturday.
Sheffield – who were relegated from the Premiership last year – lived up to their billing as the favourites after topping the Championship North regional group to qualify for the match. European indoor relay medallist Lee Thompson – who has set his personal bests over 100m and 400m in the NAL in the past – won over both of those distances in times of 10.93s and 47.87s respectively. He then remarkably pulled clear for victory in both relay races to clinch a quadruple alongside the same quartet of Hakan Dalbal, Benjamin Schofield and Abdur-Ra’uf Ibn Siddeeq.
Another excellent story on the day involved the Barrett sisters. Three-time UK champion Alicia won the 100m hurdles in 13.69s, as well as the 400m in 57.70s. Those performances followed her runner-up spot in the 100m, exactly two tenths of a second behind Shaftesbury Barnet’s Tami George, who came through to win in 12.10s. Incredibly, she was also second in both relay races.
But that’s not all for Alicia’s family. In her first competition since 2020 according to the powerof10 website, 2017 European U20 4×400 medallist Ella Barrett made her competitive debut over 800m, coming 4th in the B race in 2:37.67. She then came fifth in her first ever steeplechase. In total, the twins helped their club by taking 67 points, more than 10 per cent of Sheffield’s total of 656.
That tells you that it was the sort of day where – partly due to Cardiff and City of York withdrawing before the event – simply fielding an athlete allowed you to pick up good points. High-quality competitors could also double up with less rivals than usual to beat. In total, there were five A string double winners in individual events. If you include B string winners, nine athletes took two victories. Dalbal won the A string 200m and B string 400m, before joining in the aforementioned relay fun. Just the javelin for Joe Dunderdale though, with a respectable 62.67m giving the former UK champion first place.
Chelmsford – who were last in the top division in 2023 – had very few gaps in their team and started the match strongly. Those in green and yellow were cheering from their trackside gazebos early on as world under-20 semi-finallist Onyeka Okoh came through for 400m hurdles victory in 51.87s, with 17-year-old Amelie Scott winning the long jump with 5.49m. That allowed the Essex club to lead overall standings with six wins across the first twelve events, before Sheffield established control over proceedings.
But the team that won the East regional group kept up the pressure throughout, with Hannah Bolton doing the double over 800m and 1500m with times of 2:18.75 and 4:48.22 respectively to keep them within 20 points of the leaders with approximately two hours of the match remaining. That was around the time that Scott added a second win of her own by jumping 11.45m in the triple jump. Chelmsford were 52 points behind at the finish, with a still-impressive score of 602.
South group winners Blackheath and Bromley had their moments to shine, but were 78 points back in third. An expected victory came in the discus for NAL Championship and UK under-23 record holder Zara Obamakinwa with 54.81m, while UK indoor 800m silver medallist Henry Fisher showed his class over two laps.
There was also a one-two in the men’s long jump as Abraham Sharif (7.24m) headed Ben Sutton (6.92m), prior to former British Universities champion Kelechi Aguocha giving his team a boost with a 1.96m clearance to top the high jump charts. Hannah Marie Clark looked to set up a tense finale with an assured 3000m win in 10:40.47, but the promotion race was all-but wrapped up by that point in the evening.
Just 16 points behind in fourth, Shaftesbury Barnet’s Greg Thompson picked up his sixth NAL event win of the season with a 54.25m effort giving him maximum points in the discus the first of four throwing events that he took part in. 2016 UK javelin champion and W35 national record holder Jo Blair topped the javelin standings with 41.06m, putting Shaftesbury Barnet 76 points behind the top two with 15 events left to be scored. That meant that the team in black and white needed to gain an average of five points on Chelmsford across the remaining events to get into the all-important top two, which ultimately proved too big an ask.
But they did lock out the women’s 100m and 200m, courtesy of Tami George and Makayla Brai-Aloye. The pair finished with the same time of 12.10s across the A and B races over the shorter distance, before George was faster by a relative chasm of 0.13 seconds over the half-lap. They were joined by Grace Nyaongo and Holly Ryan to dominate the 4x100m in 48.13s.
One of the most exciting finishes of the day came in the men’s 3000m, with Tom Butler’s brilliant late sprint finish overtaking Blackheath’s European under-18 gold medallist Joseph Scanes to come through and clock 8:35.81s.
A moment for Crawley AC to celebrate came in the 1500m. Hugo Hewitt had the strength across the line to clinch maximum points for his team in a time of 4.07.95. He just edged out Chelmsford’s Joseph Grange (4:08.06) and Blackheath’s Ben O’Grady (4:08.21) in a nail-biting finish that saw O’Grady kick hard with 200m left to run. Earlier, Freya Brennand’s best hammer throw of 54.61m collected 12 points for the club.
Sixth-placed Yeovil Olympiads were down on numbers but 16-year-old Isaac Slight’s personal best clearance at 4.60m was 26 centimetres above the rest of the field in the pole vault, with team-mate Roberto Lopez Smith coming third. The vault was 10 centimetres higher than Slight cleared for third place at the England under-18 Championships in Bedford in July.