The 2014/15 Shield Competition came to an end with the Victorian Shield Final Championships held at Lakeside Stadium.
The top 2 teams in each region gathered for a final round of competition, with the club scoring the highest points on the day asserting themselves as ‘Club State Champions’ in each respective age group.
Doncaster Athletic Club featured 4 teams at these championships, with both Division 1 teams progressing through, as well as the girls U/18 and boys U/16 teams.
On a cold wet day, the sprinters seemed to struggle with swirling head winds not making life easy. Damian Di Donato and Courtney Yates were our pick of the 100m runners with both finishing in the top 10 with 11.45sec and 12.86sec respectively. Yates backed up her strong start to the day, finishing 2nd overall in the 100m Hurdles in 14.62sec behind Diamond Valley athlete, Ash Hamilton.
In the 400m, Alex Di Medio came agonisingly close to breaking 50sec in the 400m event after finishing 5th overall in the open mens age group while Ben Marcri ran home strongly to finish 6th overall in the U/16 boys race with 53.13sec. Georgia Feben broke through the minute barrier to finish 6th overall in a very competitive open womans event. Kristen Walburg helped the U/18 girls to some vital points after finishing 7th overall in a time of 61.72sec.
In a strong 1500m field, Australian representatives from Essendon Mitch Brown and Liam Adams pushed the pace early and eventually ran away with the race with both athletes sneaking under 3:55min. Nathan Down stuck to the pace early and finished just shy of running sub 4minutes. Chow Lui was the standout in the U/16 boys age group finishing 4 seconds clear of second place in 4:14.07 to earn some big premiership points. In the open womans field, Connor Gist stepped up from her 800m pet event to contest a strong 1500m lineup. World Junior representative, Georgia Griffith from Box Hill took out the event with 4:37.41 with Gist finishing amongst the front runners in 7th position.
Lui made it 2 from 2 in the U/16 boys 2000m steeplechase after blowing away the field early and extending his lead by over 12 second at the finish. Claire Walpole helped the Division 1 womans team to some valuable points after finishing in 4th position in the 3000m steeplechase with a time of 12:42.40.
Doncaster throwing sensations James Joycey, Breanna Large and Natasha Coumaros all finished in second position for their respective age groups with Breanna launching the javelin 41.49m to finish just behind training partner from Keilor, Monique Cilione. Joycey continued his silver winning performances in the U/16 boys discus throwing 46.64m while Julia Bryne bettered Coumaros by 6cm to place 4th in the U/18 girls discus.
The relays concluded the day, and with double points on the line meant that competition was particularly tight. The open mens team pulled off a perfect run, winning by the slimmest of margins, beating Nunawading by 0.01sec. The Doncaster woman ran home well to finish 4th overall against some very strong opposition.
The day didn’t have a fairytale ending but the Doncaster teams did finish high on the premiership standings. Both open division 1 teams managed top 6 placing’s while the U/16 boys finished 4th and U/18 girls rounded out the top 10.