*  NOTE : THIS ROUND WAS WASHED AND WAS RE-SCHEDULED FOR 29 JANUARY 2008

Warm conditions greeted athletes for this “make up meet” to replace the washed out Round 8 meeting. Numbers were down across the board, which was not helped by confusion among athletes from more than one club over the program schedule that had all events starting fifteen minutes earlier than the printed times in the Athletics Victoria summer season handbook

It was a night of high drama when Heather Stewart arrived at the venue to find that with the timetable change she had missed the 3,000 metres. With much trepidation, Stewart tackled the 400 metres whereupon to the amazement of watching teammates flew past the club’s premier distance athlete Carmel Taylor with 100 metres to go to finish in first place

Also performing well were Adrianna Crea and Filip Cosic who won the 2,000 metre Walk for Women’s Division 2 and Men’s Division 2 respectively. Also winning their event in the top men’s team was David Woods who clocked his fastest time for the season to record 53.9 seconds while Adam Larsson came second in the 200 metres for Division 2

In the Discus Joanne Francken was third in the women’s section with Philip Van Dueren was also third in men’s Division 3. Over at the Shot Put, third place went to Lawrence Willis in Division 2 and Mohammed Reese in Division 3

So with this being the last round of regular competition, our Division 2 men team finished the round in second place to finish in second spot on their ladder. Our Division 3 men suffered a rare defeat but still finished 14 points clear on top of their ladder and in a mirror image of our first men’s team, our Division 4 men finished the round in second place to take out second spot on their ladder

The women’s team bounced back after last week’s shock performance to finish in the round in second place, but had long ago secured top spot on their ladder and they finished the season twelve points clear on top of the ladder

The North West Region Final takes place this Satruday, 2 February 2008 and athletes will be contacted with their events

If you do not get selected for the Region Final, please know that your efforts over the course of the season have been much appreciated and that none of our teams could have finished so strongly without your help