By Natasha B, Year 10 Journalist Leader

Last weekend, the 29 June-1st July, I had the amazing opportunity to represent Middlesex in the Under 17 women’s 800m at the 92nd English Schools Championship taking place at the Alexander Stadium in Birmingham. The English Schools Athletics’ Association (ESAA) finals is one of the biggest youth athletics competitions in the world where athletes represent their school county and compete against other counties. In order to represent your county, you need to reach a qualification time for your chosen distance (or distance/jump for field events) and this year was the first time I had managed to achieve that so I was very excited yet apprehensive to see how it would go.

On Thursday, we caught the coach from NHEHS to drive up to Birmingham. Once we had arrived we were given time to get to know some of our teammates before we were allocated our rooms and roommate. Then after we settled in we had dinner and got to talk to our team. I really enjoyed meeting everyone on the team and it was great to talk to people just as excited and interested about athletics as I am. Many people had also achieved some incredible things which were very inspirational to hear about.

The next day, after an early start, we arrived at the Alexander Stadium. I was very excited to compete on this track as it hosted last year’s Commonwealth Games which I went to watch with my family last summer. It was an incredible feeling to know you were competing in the same stadium many of my favourite athletes such as Keely Hodgkinson and Laura Muir had competed at. I spent the morning enjoying watching all the races and field events and ran my 800m race in the afternoon. 

There was a separate warm up track where all the athletes completed their warm ups followed by a call room where we sat and waited for our races. Everything felt very professional compared to the normal open and league events I take part in, but it made me more excited for my race. The whole event was also live streamed on Youtube with commentary which I also thought was very cool and made me feel as if I was competing in an elite championship. I was delighted at the end of my race to scrape a new PB (personal best) time of 2:16.13 by 0.04 of a second! 

The following day I also watched the finals of the events with the team before the athletes’ parade where all the counties process around the track holding their county flags. We then returned home later that day. The whole experience was really inspiring and motivating. I am really hoping to qualify for the event again next year where I will be the older year in my Under 17 age category. Thank you so much to Mr Henderson and Miss Newman for helping managing the Middlesex team.