THOMAS Hardye School students Ben Westhenry and Tara Chittenden excelled at the South West Schools Championships and earned themselves spots in the Dorset squad for this weekend’s English Schools Track & Field Championships in Gateshead.

Dorchester AC’s Chittenden claimed her place with a superb 1,500m run in the junior girls’ event.

The Year Nine student led from the start and only got caught in the last 100m by Devon’s Victoria Weir.

However, her efforts were still enough to win a silver medal in a personal best time of 4mins 44.48secs, which is a national standard qualifying time and has moved her up to 16th in the UK Under-15 Girls’ rankings.

It will be Chittenden’s first time at the prestigious English Schools Championships while for Westhenry it will be his fourth appearance at the event. The middle-distance runner jumped to third in the Under-20 men’s rankings for the 2,000m steeplechase after his performance in the senior boys’ event at the championships.

Westhenry, who is the younger year of the age group, was up against the UK number two, Blair Brown from Somerset, and at one stage looked poised to cause an upset.

However, with 700m to go he failed to clear a barrier and went flying which gave Brown the opportunity to pull clear. Westhenry still achieved a new personal best and a national standard qualifying time of 6mins 1sec and that was enough to secure silver.

Thankfully, despite battered and bruised at the end of the race, Westhenry suffered no serious injuries and will go head-to-head with Brown again at the English Schools Championships.