Sophie Rowan wining silver medal at National Indoor Pentathlon U14

Sophie Rowan became the second Kilmarnock Harrier winning a medal in the combined events at a National Championship, U14. Sophie followed her club mate Evie Bartl, who won the same event last year.

Sophie had an excellent start to her medal quest by jumping 1.42 m in the high jump (best jump of the competition), which gave her 534 points and establishing an early lead of about 34 points. Her good start gave her confidence going into her 60m hurdles race where Sophie exceeded all expectations, clocking the second fastest time of 9.94, totaling a massive score of 723, which helped her to extend her lead even further.

 

The third event was the long jump where Sophie leaped to a new PB of 4.23 (362p), extending her lead to about 60 points.

After a short lunch break it continued with Sophie’s weakest event the shot put. There was optimism that Sophie could also achieve a new PB in the throwing event as she had 3 throws over 7m distance in training the previous night. Although Sophie did not exceed the 7m mark this time her best put of 6.74m (318p) was still the 4th best of the day and a new PB. Despite loosing her lead to the eventual winner from Central AC, Sophie was only 30 points behind and had a comfortable lead of 150p to the third placed athlete and well in front of the 4th placed athlete . In Pentathlon terms she would be guaranteed a medal if she was going to run her PB of 2.55. Despite coming last in her 800m heat, Sophie crossed the line in 2.53 (new PB), which gave her 433 points, enough to secure the silver medal. Sophie’s score of 2365 was indeed 90 points more then Evie’s last year’s winning performance.

For me as a coach, there was very much to learn about Sophie’s ups and downs leading up to this Pentathlon. When there is one lesson for me then I would strongly encourage young athletes to put in much effort into training and preparation. Just imagine what Sophie’s score could have been if she had ACTUALLY trained more regularly for some of her events… Hopefully the new Combined Event Group will help to establish a platform where athletes are giving an environment,  which goes towards this aim, quality training through technical training to learn all events more in depth. Well done Sophie!