BOX HILL MEN WIN STATE LEAGUE FINAL
DAY 2 REPORT - THURSDAY 4 APRIL 2002

Click on the photo for more photos from the night ==>

The Box Hill Athletic Club Men's State League team last night convincingly won the Athletics Victoria State League premiership for the first time since 1995. With a great team effort, the team came from 22 points behind Essendon at the start of the night to run out convincing winners by about 40 points. Congratulations to team manager Chris O'Connor for pulling together the team throughout the season and to team captain Cameron Baker for helping to motivate the team to victory.

The Women's team unfortunately were not able to repeat the successes of the last 2 years and finished in third place, behind the strong Bayside combine team and Melbourne Uni. Despite having many holes in the team due to unavailability of athletes for a variety of reasons, Box Hill finished just 20 points behind the winners and with a bit of luck could easily have won another premiership. It is a great credit to Val Armstrong and the team that they got so close to winning with the number of athletes that were missing.

While the second day of the finals looked better for the men's team on paper, both Essendon and APS had shown greater depth throughout the season and it was going to need everything to go right to overhaul them. For the first time during the season we managed to have a qualifier in every event, with our only non-scoring place being the second walker where Sam Hassett just failed to qualify. However, Sam helped to push Graham Watt to score our first points for the season in the 3000 walk.

The 400 m hurdle runners started the night in great fashion for Box Hill with Ned McLeod running a PB to finish second in the first heat in 54.32, and then Dave Featherstone won the second heat in 55.99. This briefly put us into the lead, however this was short lived as Essendon then finished second and fifth in the walk to regain the lead. Graham Watt scored valuable points by just sneaking under the qualifying time to finish in seventh place.

The 200 m races were very close, with Tim Williams finishing second behind Paul Pearce of Essendon in 21.38, and Marty Duke finishing second in the second heat in 21.92. Braden Fraser then produced a great finish in the third heat to win in the time of 22.22 meaning that Essendon had gained just one point over the three races and we had pulled well clear of the other clubs.

In a big turnaround from recent years, we also had great success in the field events with Ronnie Buckley finishing third in the discus with a throw of 44.92 m ? the best throw by a Box Hill athlete for many years. Steven Hooker then cleared 1.80 m in the high jump at his first attempt for equal 4th, despite having a sore knee. He then leapt 6.92 m in the long jump for third place to pull us back to within 13 points of Essendon.

The Box Hill 800 m runners have dominated the event all season. Last night proved to be no exception and was the decisive turning point in the competition. Michael Jones continued his unbeaten run in State League competition for the season to win the first heat in 1:52.26, while Tim Heron finished a close second in the second heat in 1:53.73 and Trent Hartshorne finished fourth in the third heat in 1:57.83. The Essendon runners finished no better than 6th in any of the heat so we were able to take a good lead into the 5000.

Marcus Tierney (14:57.52), John Meagher (14:51.92) and Graeme Olden (14:49.14) all ran solid races to finish in 7th, 6th and 5th places respectively, with John and Graeme running their fastest times for the season. With Essendon having only one runner, the premiership was sealed and it was left to the 4x400 m relay team of Ned McLeod, Michael Jones, Michael Saunders and Marty Duke to finish off the night in style, with a second placing in the relay behind Melbourne Uni.

Many thanks to everyone who came along to provide valuable support to the team last night. It was great to see that Box Hill had by far the biggest group of supporters which was a great help to motivate all the athletes to perform at their best.

MEN'S RESULTS

WOMEN'S RESULTS