Top four for MUAC teams at Shield Final
AV Shield Final
Strong performances across many events saw MUAC’s two Division One teams come close to premierships but ultimately fall just short at the biggest day of club track and field in Victoria, the AV Shield Final at Lakeside Stadium. MUAC’s Division One Women finished third on 7847 points, just 265 points from victory and our Division One Men finished fourth on 10372 points, just four hundred points off second. Summer Manager Pete Gaukrodger did a sterling job wrangling the troops over a massive 11 hours of athletics and our volunteers (Adam, Tim, Jeff, Jimmy, Matt, Alex, Max, Nese and Ciara) were hard at work all day weekend MUAC’s volunteering duties and setting up and provisioning MUAC’s Members Marquee on the scoreboard hill.
MUAC’s 3000m women kicked off proceedings at 9am with a brief break to welcome Steve Hooker and the Queen’s Baton Relay for a lap of the track. Joel Baden and Joseph Baldwin both topped 500 points in the high jump as they prepared for the Australian Athletics Champs and Commonwealth Games trials.
Harrison Kimpton-Moss claimed the fifth highest points score on the day, earning 532 points for the club with his 52.96 run in the 400m hurdles. Other 500+ point performances came from Nick Earl in the 3000m (8.28.7) and the two high jumpers.
Dale Masini collected top points for the MUAC women with her shot put of 8.30m, just in front of Jess Meare’s 1.65m high jump and Eleni Gilden’s 2:16.1 800m, Kira Davey doing a power of work, as she has all season, stepping up wherever needed.
AV Shield is a competition that promotes and rewards getting involved in the whole sport. A big thanks to MUAC athletes who stepped up and did events out of their comfort zone, including Allyson O’Brien and Tim Thomas in the walk, David Kirszenblat and Hamish Beaumont in the 400m hurdles and Phil Van Dueren in the high jump.
With the premierships so close, and every event a valuable point scoring opportunity a big focus for MUAC in the 2018/19 season will be working to fill every event and delivering strong relay teams to the final.
