1966

At first sight, the athletics results this year were good, if a little erratic. However, a school of our size can scarcely fail to contain sufficient talent for a reasonable athletics team in any year. Thus, the school's performance this year was not, as a whole, outstanding, by our standards.
This is not to say that the school did not possess in 1966 as many potentially excellent athletes as it has in previous years, but, unfortunately, more of these than usual remained only potentially excellent. The reason for this is not hard to see; the amount of athletics training done at this school has never been as great as is should be, but this year only a very small number indeed seemed to do any serious training at all. A number of relay teams even threw away valuable points because their baton changes, which could have been perfected by only an hour or so's work, had been practised insufficiently. This school has training facilities unequalled in this area, and it is a great pity that more advantage is not taken of these, both during the summer and during the winter. The standard of athletics at Monoux will never reach its full potential until more training is undertaken; ability alone is not enough.
In the Champion Russell Cup competition for track events, the school came seventh out of twelve schools competing, gaining only one third of the winners' points total; last year we came equal fourth, with two thirds of the winners' points total. Once again, R. Wilson was our only individual winner in this competition, winning the U.17 440 yards.
The Campbell Trophy is a competition (for track team events) with a very high standard; even so our final placing of eighth out of ten was rather disappointing.
The school fared rather better in the Waltham Forest Secondary School Sports, gaining first place in the Junior section once more, second place in the Senior section, which we won last year, and second place in the Intermediate section, in which we finished third last year with a very similar team.
The Wadham Lodge Inter-Schools meeting (another team event) is a great test of depth, since each competitor may enter only one event. Here the school did improve on last year, by winning the Intermediate as well as the Junior section.
The Bickersteth Cup competition, for field events, ended with school in sixth position, admittedly with a considerably weakened team.