Bantam and midget athletes from St. Tim's competed in the Calgary Spring Challenge at the Foothills Track last weekend (May 13-14).

Travis Cummings, Thunder Head Coach, says the track meet always brings out the best talent in the province and this year was no exception. Overall, Cummings, shares many athletes saw personal bests.

While the high school track season kicked off on May 4, this was the juniors opening race weekend. Cummings, says new kid on the block, Holly Moores, grade 7, ran outstanding races in both the 800m and 1200m earning her double gold medals. Cummings says unleashing a devastating kick in the final 200m of each race sealed victories for the promising young athlete.

"She won them both in really dominating fashion, she ran really smart in 1200 I think she won by 12 seconds . I haven't coached that may athletes that have basic speed that is that good, she works really hard."

A silver medal was also won by Jacob Mate in the midget boys shot put, who was one of only two boys to throw over 10m. Connor Hanna captured a bronze medal in the bantam boys 800m on the second day of his first ever track meet, and the fifth medal came from the midget girls 4x100m relay team of Melissa Yeung, Carling Bremner, Miranda Hobbs, and Briann Reis; running a very fast time of 58.51 seconds for the win.

Although some star bantams from last year didn't medal, athletes like Darci Petersen continued to show strong performance, placing a very close 4th place in the midget girls 1200m, and finished 7th in the 800m. Grace Boston placed 6th in the midget girls 1200m, and 9th in the 800m. Emily Carvalho also placed 9th in the midget girls 1200m, finishing top 10 with a big personal best effort. In sprints, Liam Hogg placed 6th overall in the midget boys 300m, and also nearly medaled in the long jump, placing a close 4th with a jump of 5.33m. 

While, Cummings, knows some of the athletes were disappointed with how they placed he thought they did pretty good considering they moved up to compete in a tougher age group.

"They're getting faster and they competed against some tough competition. They just got to grow a bit, I mean they did well. That midget age group is tough, there is a big difference between a kid in grade 8 and a kid in grade 10. The midget and the youth age group is tough, Athletics Canada kind of changed the age grouping the last couple of years. So I think the midget and youth are some of the toughest to bump up to an older age group because when you look at a grade 12 to a grade 10 that is a huge difference in their development." 

Junior highs will have city championships in two weeks time on June 6, before competing in class provincials June 16-18 at Foothills Stadium, in the CALTAF Track Classic Meet. While the high school team is competing at the Calgary High School Blue Divisional meet today (May 17) and again on May 27, at the the Calgary City High School Championships.