Charlie Myers and Joshua Cowperthwaite top fine displays by Teesside athletes

Teesside athletes have been in fine form both indoors and on the cross country scene

By Rick Betts

Tees athletes have been in fine form both indoors and on the cross country scene with standout performances from Charlie Myers and Joshua Cowperthwaite.

Myers was competing at the prestigious Vault Manchester pole vault competition, where he was hoping to improve on his lifetime best of 4.55m set when competing at the Vault Cardiff event in February.

At the regional Sports Centre in Manchester, he found himself in exalted company with World Youth champion Harry Coppell (Wigan) and England under-17 champion Adam Hague (The Dearne).

Hague set a lifetime best of 5.28m to claim first place and Coppell, with 5.03m, was second while the impressive Myers improved on his personal best by a massive 18cm to clear a new club record of 4.73m and seal third place.

At the Inter-counties Cross Country Championships held in Birmingham, several Teesside athletes were chosen to represent the North East of England Team.

Leading performer on the day was Joshua Cowperthwaite (Middlesbrough AC) in the under-13 boys’ age group. Competing over 3km, national under-13 champion Cowperthwaite had a close battle with Zakariya Mahamed (Hampshire) and Harry Digby (Berkshire). Completing the course in 10mins 45secs, Cowperthwaite eventually finished second, seven seconds behind Mahamed and five seconds ahead of Digby.

Luke Petit (Middlesbrough AC) ran a very strong race to finish in 60th place in the field of more than 300. The largest contingent of Teesside athletes were found in the under-15 boys’ age group with Nathan Baker (Middlesbrough AC) leading the group in 17th place.

New Marske Harriers pair Hassan Ben-Tiba and Reece Curtis ran well to finish in 49th and 59th places respectively over the 4.5km course and Josh Allen (Middlesbrough AC) completed the race in the top half of the field in 135th place.

Rebekah Kitchener (Middlesbrough AC) finished in 165th place in the under-15 girls’ race. Phillipa Stone (Middlesbrough AC) ran another top class race finishing in 25th place in the under-17 women’s 5km race.

England fell running international athlete Jack Willis (Middlesbrough & Cleveland Harriers) was the area’s representative in the under-17 men’s race and finished in 133rd place over 6km.