SEREN Rodgers won the U20 pentathlon event at the England Athletics Combined Events championships while representing Taunton Athletics Club on the weekend.
At just 16 years old, Seren overcome some older opponents in a very hard fought competition where the lead was constantly changing.
"Seeing as it was my first under-20 competition, I was just treating it as a training day to see where I’d end up for the rest of the season so to come out and win it, I just can’t believe it," Rogers said.
She added the highlight of the day was the hurdles event.
"The hurdles I was particularly pleased about because we train outdoors so, coming indoors, there was no wind or anything.
"Also the long jump to get back on track because my indoor long jump season hasn’t gone amazingly so to get back where I was I was just so happy with.”
After a see-saw tussle which saw four different leaders after each of the first four events, Rodgers hung on gamely in the final exhausting 800m to take gold.
Despite this being her first year in the under-20 age group, she scored 3657 to beat Zara Tyas from Stockport T&F into second by 61 points.
Katie Chapman from Exeter won bronze with 3573.
It was Rodgers who won the hurdles with 8.92 on her first time over the senior hurdles.
Tyas was the best in the hurdles with 9.42 which took her into the lead, while Rodgers cleared 1.58m to miss her PB by 4cm.
In the shot put Rodgers scored 9.23m on her first ever try with the 4kg shot.
However, the long jump threw the event wide open, Rodgers again showed her speed to register 5.79m for first, coming within 3cm of her PB.
But it was Chapman who then went into the lead for the first time as she recorded 5.67m.
She had a lead of 114 over Kennedy with Rodgers third going in to the final event - 800 metres.
Given the respective 800m PBs, the top four positions going into it were always going to change.
Tyas was the quickest on paper and she set off in the lead early, however, Rodgers refused to let her get too far away and perhaps even closed the gap over the last 200m.
She was ultimately just 0.55 seconds behind and her face as she crossed the line showed she knew she had done enough to win the overall competition.
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