Australian Club Championships
5 February 2005 - Canberra

On Saturday 5^th February, the Box Hill men’s team won the Australian Club Championships in Canberra after many years of close misses and disappointments. In a great weekend for the Club, the women’s team also a medal, finishing in 3^rd place to take away the bronze medal.

Congratulations to the 13 men and 10 women who travelled to Canberra to compete for the Club and take away senior National Championships medals.

President of Athletics Victoria, Max Binnington, was on hand to watch the competition and congratulated Box Hill on becoming the first Victorian Club to win an Australian Club Championship title. He issued the challenge to us to win 17 straight Australian Club Championship titles to match our 17 straight A grade victories from the 1960’s and 1970’s.

Highlights from the meet included wins by Mohamad Zeed in the 100 m and 200 m hurdles, Joel Pocklington in the pole vault, David Featherston in the 200 m hurdles, Grant Hodges in the long jump, Georgina Connell in the 800 m, Veronica Kirby and Melanie Adams in the high jump and Sarah Hewitt and Lauren Burns in the discus.

Mohamad’s effort was particularly impressive as just 4 hours later he backed up to win the 110 m hurdles at the Telstra A series meet in Canberra. This typified the wonderful Club spirit shown by Club members in Canberra which was the reason we were able to triumph over clubs form other states whose teams were weakened by the withdrawal of many of their better athletes who were competing in the A series meet.

After watching several Box Hill athletes competing in the Telstra A series meet in the afternoon, the team congregated in Manuka to celebrate winning Australian Championship medals and re-live the deeds of the morning.

To finish off a great weekend for the Club won both  the Open Men’s 4 x 200 m relay and 4 x 400 m relay at the Australian Club Relay Championships held on the Sunday morning.

Many thanks to Chris O’Connor, Julie Milner, Rob Falkenberg, Cathy Tilley, Bert Tilley, Lynette Kirby who travelled to Canberra to support the team and assist with team management.

For a full set of results, click on the following link: Results