Team Isle of Man scooped their third straight win of the four-match Northern Track and Field League in perfect weather conditions for athletics at Queensway Stadium in Wrexham on Sunday.  

There was not a breath of wind, with temperatures comfortable for all disciplines contested, and this led to a string of excellent performances.  

Despite being slightly depleted with several leading athletes unavailable because of commitments elsewhere, Team IoM (made up of representatives of Manx Harriers, Northern AC and Western AC) still won the six-team match by a comfortable margin to all but clinch promotion back to the Western Premier Division for next year.  

This will offer a higher level of competition, more in keeping with the abilities of the Isle of Man athletes.   

No fewer than 19 personal bests were achieved during the day by 14 different athletes, with Lucy Cartwright taking pride of place with three.  

In her first year competing at this level, she has enjoyed a wonderful season and set new bests of 26.32 metres for the discus and 29.42m for the senior weight (600g) javelin. She also set a time of 79.0 seconds in her first attempt at the 400m hurdles.  

In the aforementioned hurdles race, Aimee Christian executed another superb performance, looking smooth over all the barriers and taking 1.2 seconds off her best with a time of 65.2s.  

She has improved by no fewer than four seconds since the start of the season and now ranks highly on the all-time IoM list of female 400 metres hurdlers.  

Sprinter Carla Teece set two new bests during the day and also produced a blistering final leg of the women’s 4x100 metres relay to take the team to victory. 

She clocked 12.6 seconds for the 100m and, with her first foray into the 200m distance outdoors for a couple of years, she set a new best of 26.2s.  

An athlete who is always busy at these events is Kyle Martin and he was rewarded with new best distances of 24.53 metres in the hammer and 36.17m in the javelin.   

Orla Goddard made her debut in the Northern League and had a day she won’t forget. She set a new best of 19.92 metres in the hammer and in her first attempt with the 600g javelin she threw 24.52 metres.  

Unfortunately, in the process of one of her javelin throws she sustained a nasty and painful knee injury which required prompt attention from the first aiders on duty at the match. Best wishes to Orla for a speedy recovery.  

The distance runners were in excellent form, with Corrin Leeming producing another fantastic time of 14 minutes 45.5 seconds in the men’s 5,000 metres and the ever-reliable Jamie Hayes clocking a new pb of 17:25.6.  

In the women’s 3,000 metres Laura Dickinson missed her pb by only one-tenth of a second, but behind her Dawn Atherton improved her best by a big margin to 11:29.8.  

Atherton has since been rewarded with selection to represent England in the women’s 40 age group at the Masters 5k representative race against Wales in Kingsley, Cheshire next month.  

Others to achieve new best performances were Daniel Stewart-Clague in the javelin, Dom Dunwell in the 400 metres, Corbyn Schade in the 1,500m, Alan Stobart in the 200m and Lara Smith in the 100m hurdles.  

There were many other highly impressive performances throughout the day and it was a real team effort once again.   

 The thanks of all go to team manager Petra Atchison and to all the officials who travelled with the team. 

- The final match of the season takes place at Wavertree in Liverpool on Saturday, August 17.  

DAVID GRIFFITHS