See the athletic stars of tomorrow at the Sportshall UK Final in Manchester

Having fought their way to the top through a series of Regional Finals, the most promising young athletes from across the UK will battle it out to be crowned UK Champions at the Sportshall Athletics UK Finals taking place at Manchester’s Regional Indoor Athletics Arena on the weekend of 13-14 April.

The North West Regional Final on 24 March was the final event in the series for 2019 and the automatic qualifying teams and individuals have now earned their place in Manchester. The eight English regions will be joined by the Ulster Champions and the Welsh Champions. Norfolk teams once again showed their strength in depth at their regional final in February taking all four titles across the age groups. In the East Midlands the competition was fierce and in fact all four counties of Derbyshire, Leicestershire & Rutland, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire will have either teams or individuals representing the region in Manchester. As with the East Midlands, the South East is also fiercely competitive across all the age groups with Berkshire and Surrey coming out at the top of the pile this year.

The finals are a great place to spot the “stars of tomorrow”. The 2016 UK Sportshall All-Rounder Champion, Amber Anning, who went on to win a silver medal at the recent European Athletics Indoor Championships, began her athletics career competing in Sportshall at the age of nine. Acting as Sportshall Ambassador she urged younger athletes to “continue doing Sportshall until you are as old as me, because it is fun, skillful and great winter competition and some of the best athletes in the UK started out in Sportshall.”

Amber joins a growing number of international stars who first shone in Sportshall competition; Morgan Lake, Commonwealth silver medalist in the High Jump, won the All-Rounder competition in 2011 and Dina Asher Smith, Andrew Pozzi and Katarina Johnson-Thompson all experienced their first taste of athletics competition in Sportshall.

Sportshall as a programme was created over 40 years ago and now engages over a million children in athletics each year through club and school games programmes. The event is supported by Eveque Leisure Equipment, England Athletics, the Eastlands Trust and the Amateur Athletic Association.

For more information or to attend the event please contact the Sportshall Team at team@sportshall.org or call 01606 353 550

Qualifiers