DR Challoner's Girls School came second in the English Schools Cup to book their place as the best Bucks team in school athletics history.

The previous best performance by a Bucks school also belonged to Dr Challoner's, when they took third place two years ago but this time their intermediate team went one better at the prestigious finals in Telford.

And although the girls, aged between 13 and 14, could not quite walk off with the title, they can claim to be the best field athletes in the country.

They were leading the competition at the halfway stage, after all the field events, but were pipped to the overall title by Millfield School, once the track events kicked in.

But Dr Challoner's School head of PE Julie Gompertz was not disappointed.

She said: "The whole team was phenomenal. It was such a team thing and a fantastic effort.

"We were ecstatic. We thought we might come in the top five but this is much better than anything we expected."

After the field events, Dr Challoner's were 11 points ahead, but they could not hold that advantage in the field events where Millfield came charging through to take the trophy again.

The Somerset School, which prides itself on its sporting prowess and even has specialist coaches for individual sports, eventually won the contest with 441 points compared to Dr Challoner's total of 407.

Gompertz said: "Millfield were phenomenal, they always are. We were delighted to be doing so well after the field events. We knew we were strong in that department, we are strong on the track as well but we knew it was going to be very difficult and that Millfield would come fighting back at us. Realistically we knew we would be doing very well to hold onto second place which we did."

Dr Challoner's performance was a real team effort helped by some tremendous individual performances from the athletes who, in compliance with the competition rules, had to do one track event and one field event each.

Gompertz said: "It is very rare in competition that everyone performs to the best of their ability but the girls did."

Skipper Ros West played a captain's role. Her specialist event is the hurdles but she also chipped in with a splendid 1.47m in the high jump.

Judith Turner threw a personal best 32 metres to win the javelin and then took another personal best as she galloped round the 200 metres course.

Clare-Sara Khaghani also added valuable points to the school's score when she took a personal best in the discuss with a launch of 29.38 metres.

The school's under-12s team also qualified for the finals and gained valuable experience finishing 11th out of 12 schools competing.

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