Kettering Town Harriers quartet all set for English Schools Championships

The event is being held at the redeveloped Alexander Stadium, which hosted the opening and closing ceremonies as well as the athletics and para athletics competitions at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham last year.

U20 Alice Bates, who represented GB twice during 2022, will compete for the Senior Girls over 1500m and heads into the championship as one of the top seeds.

Bates, who competed at English Schools in 2021 over 3000m, ran a recent superb 1500m PB of 4:22.14, just 0.15 outside of the European U20 Championship qualification mark.

She is currently ranked the UK’s seventh U20 and will go into the championship with high hopes of a podium finish.

Fellow U20 Alice Bennett makes her fourth visit to the championship and is a two-time medallist, previously winning silver in 2021 and bronze in 2022 over her specialist distance of 800m.

Bennett competes for the Senor Girls and will also be eyeing her third championship medal. She is currently ranked fifth in the UK in the SG age group.

U15 George Mills, who only recently started throwing the Javelin in 2022, has shown great levels of consistency and had made big improvements under Harriers’ throws coach Lorna Barlow.

Mills won the Northants County Schools Championships before following that up with a fine win in the prestigious Mason Trophy and recently threw a PB of 45.47m in the KTH Open, which ranks him eighth in the UK.

This will be his first English Schools Championship and his first taste of high level competition.

U15 Jemima Davey, meanwhile, heads into her second consecutive English Schools Championships and will be hoping to make an impact and make the final.

The Millfield School Student will be representing Somerset where she became county champion earlier in the year.

Davey is steadily improving her times each race and is currently ranked 41st in the UK.