West Norfolk athlete sets three new pbs in new age group

West Norfolk Athletic Club had two athletes competing at the UK Indoor Championships held at Sheffield.This high-level competition is regarded as one of the biggest indoor events on the calendar.Under-17 first-year Rebecca Johnson enjoyed a fabulous year in 2024.In her final year as an under-15, the teenager finished the season UK ranked fourth indoors, and seventh outdoors, and winning medals in national events.Despite a new age group and new hurdle heights and distances to deal with, the KES Academy student still dug deep and made the final of the 60m hurdles on Sunday.In round one, Johnson finished in third, an auto qualifying spot for the semi-final, with a personal best run of 8.94sec.After a two-hour wait, then came that tough semi-final heat racing against the current UK number one. Johnson raced hard once again and finished a fantastic third place and ran another new personal best in the process of 8.80sec. That result qualified her for the final as seventh fastest. Composure was needed for the big race with another hour and a half wait for the third last event of the weekend’s competition.The final did not disappoint – and it was a very fast race.The championship record was broken by Aberdeen athlete, Holly Whittaker, whilst Johnson had another blazing run to finish a close fifth, just missing out on a fourth place by one-hundredth of a second in 8.72sec. This was Johnson’s third personal best of the day.A big debut outdoor season as an under-17 athlete to follow for this very talented, and inspirational young lady. Under-17 Charlie Broad finished the shot final on Sunday with a silver medal with an amazing 15.82m put, just two centimetres off of his personal best, which he pulled out in round one.The top spot was won by the Lawson Capes (grandson of the late Geoff Capes) with a massive 18.59m put. As winners, Broad and Capes have been invited by England Athletics to compete in a special open event this Saturday at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham.Meanwhile, senior athletes and brothers Alfie and Charlie Williams competed against each other in the shot put at the University Indoor Steel Cup at the EIS in Sheffield – pre-cursor to this weekend’s BUCs championship.Alfie had a slow start and waited until the final round 4 to pull out his best put of the day, 14.82m.This pushed him up into second place just shy of the 15.08m from the eventual winner, and teammate Zac Davies.Alfie was awarded silver. Charlie Williams just began finding his rhythm in round three with his best put of 11.39m and finished in seventh place.The British University Championships is next for them this coming weekend and marks the first time the brothers have been selected indoors for this event by their universities Loughborough and Sheffield Hallam.