ATHLETICS: Grantham’s Schools champion sprinter Amy is representing England this weekend

Year 10 KGGS student Amy Hunt is heading to Ireland this weekend after she qualified to run for England in the Schools International meeting at Dublin.

Representing Lincolnshire in the English Schools Athletics Championships in Birmingham at the weekend, sprinter Amy dominated the under-17 girls 100 metres – winning her heat, her semi-final and then the final.

She was feeling good going into the English Championships, as training had been going well and she had been running consistently for a number of weeks.

This year Amy has moved up a year group to under-17 in the national rankings and Intermediate Girls for schools competitions.

The championships were held at Birmingham’s Alexander Stadium which was the venue the previous weekend for the British Athletics Team Trials.

Amy was in heat four of the 100m on Friday morning and had a nice relaxed run to finish first in 12.13 seconds which, though only the third fastest heat, saw her conserve energy by not running too fast and easing down considerably 10 metres from the finish line.

In the afternoon’s semi-final, Amy was up against some very quick girls but, again, enjoyed a nice, easy run to finish first in 11.77 seconds, which proved to be the fastest semi-finals performance.

This gave her great confidence going into the final, and a good night’s sleep saw her feeling ready and refreshed for Saturday’s climax.

Amy had two very quick starters either side of her in the final, whilst her main rivals in terms of time were on her right hand side.

After a reasonable start, she was up near the front after 10 metres and never looked back as she scorched home in 11.76 seconds and a good two metres in front of the runner-up place.

Her time was the second quickest in the UK this year – the fastest being her own 11.66 run at

the Loughborough International.

She was over the moon to have triumphed again to make it three wins out of three at these championships.

The first two finishers in each discipline at this competition at intermediate level were chosen to represent English Schools against Ireland, Wales and Scotland in Dublin, to which Amy is ecstatic to be going.

This goes some way in making up for her not being eligible for selection for the English Youth Commonwealth team, as Amy was too young in accordance with the English Athletics selection policy of taking athletes born in 2000 and 2001; Amy was born in 2002.

Amy said: “I am extremely happy to win gold in the 100m at English Schools for a third time and honoured to represent England next week in Dublin.

“I really enjoyed the experience again and loved to run at Alexander Stadium a week after the British Trials.

“I was pleased with my series of runs and it was good to have the three races over two days as a practice for future competitions.”