Massing at the club for a 7:45am start in the drizzle was not made any better by the absence of the long-heralded coach. One worried Team Manager’s phone call later and our chariot pulled into the car park allowing the Team to arrive at the Ashdown Leisure Centre in style. In a year where team numbers have been low just enabling a few athletes to attend that would otherwise have been out off by the journey could make all the difference. A big thank you to the Club for agreeing to part-subsidise the coach hire.

The joyous moment of overtaking the Guildford and Godalming team coach on the motorway on the way down was lost to our athletes who were either heads down and focused on their various gadgets or out for the count from near end-of-term sleepovers.

British Athletics League Division 1, Match 2

Portsmouth, 2^ndJune 2018

Kingston and Poly’s Division 1 journey in the British Athletics League took them to the south coast for match 2, as Portsmouth played host to a double-header match with Division 4.

Another stunning day awaited the athletes, with temperatures more or less perfect if a little too hot at times, and a wind that unfortunately was too strong to be legal.

For Team Manager Chris Hall, the build-up to this match felt easier with all events filled quickly but there were still some unfortunate absences and a few too many doubling and quintupling-up to be completely comfortable!

Proceedings started with the Long Jump at the earlier time of 10.30am. For this we had Chris Hall and Humphrey Waddington, representing K&P as a duo for the 5^thtime already this season. After some early-season promise, Chris has found the going difficult recently in the Long and things were looking bleak after 2 rounds, but he managed to leapfrog a Windsor athlete to place 3^rdB with 6.31m – a much better return than at Eton! Humphrey meanwhile has gone from strength to strength after initially being unsure if he would even have a season, and his jumps crept up gradually to an excellent 6.73m which was unfortunate to only place 6^thA. 14 points was the result and a decent start.