BUCS Indoors 2025

A few weeks ago, the sprinters and hurdlers of Exeter University made their way to Sheffield for the BUCS Indoor Championships. Let’s see how they all got on!

60m Women

• Lucy Moore. 0.17 off SB, second fastest ever, fastest since 2019.

• Mary Asse. 0.31 off PB and dealt with her race nerves brilliantly. Mary only bought her first pair of spikes before Christmas and is already beating athletes at BUCS.

60m Men

• Rohan Gray. Disappointing false start. He was in shape to go under 7 seconds and comfortably reach the semi-finals.

• Ali Klemz. 0.01 off PB. In great shape to get close to sub-11 in the summer.

200m Women

• Ayo Cole. Fastest 200m in 2 years. Always a reliable runner, and in great shape to run even faster in the summer.

200m Men

• Vlad Levchenko. Disappointingly, a disqualification for running outside his lane. However, Vlad was in fantastic shape and was clocked around 22.1 easing up over the line. He is in PB shape!

• Akeem Akintokum. Our distance student ran a good race for someone who has decided to focus on his outdoor season this year.

Long Jump Women

• Amelia Heasley. A 24cm PB, and a brilliant experience for an athlete who has only competed at 2 other events!

Long Jump Men

• Maurice Sainsbury. Equalled his PB, but with the knowledge that if he gets things right, he can go far beyond!

• Orin Vitalis. Unfortunately, Orin had a bad injury on his first jump. We wish him well with his recovery.

Triple Jump Men

• Bill Mallen. A 35cm PB! His previous PB was from 2020. One of the performances of the weekend.

4x200 Relay Women

• Ayo, Kate, Lucy and Jemima ran fantastically well. Most notably, Lucy ran a brilliant split that equates to a PB by 0.8 seconds. She was nervous before the race and unsure of how she would cope. She coped brilliantly!

4x200m Relay Men

• Rohan, Akeem, Vlad and Elliot produce arguably the performance of the weekend, taking a whole second off last year’s club record, which was 3 seconds off the previous club record! Three of these athletes were disqualified from their individual events. Everyone makes mistakes, it’s how you respond to them that matters. Rohan’s split of 21.8 was a 1.2 second PB, Vlad ran a flying 22.1 (his fastest indoor time), and Elliot and Akeem ran great too. This put the men into our first ever 4x200m relay final where they came 5th, a brilliant performance considering the quality of other teams, the chaos in the race and the fatigue in their legs.

Holly Leman-Liberal is not part of Exeter University, but I coach her too. She did herself proud over 800m. Her time wasn’t what was expected, or representative of the form that she is in, but this was the first major competition she has entered for a very long time, and she was incredibly nervous before the race! In fact, I’m surprised she didn’t run straight out of the arena when the gun fired. Just being at the start line was a brilliant achievement. As her self-belief grows, her times will get quicker!

Finally, well done to pole vaulter George Mackenzie for competing. George has had a difficult start to athletics at Uni due to the lack of training options in the South West. He’s been training with the group, but I’m not a pole vault coach. We’re working hard to sort things out for him!

All in all, the weekend was a great success, and I’m delighted with how everyone performed and conducted themselves. I’m my own biggest critic, but I look at the results and it reassures me that we’re doing the right things. Lots of thought, effort and programming goes into the coaching of these athletes. It’s great to see it paying off.