SOPHIE Merritt was not among the medallists at the 2015 Hampshire Track & Field Championships.

Yet her weekend could hardly have gone better.

With qualification for the World Youth Championships top of her priority list, the Southampton AC shot putter sacrificed county success on Saturday to stake her claim for a ticket to Colombia.

A special under-18 event was laid on at Bedford, giving World Youth hopefuls the opportunity to show what they could do with the three-kilogram shot that will be used in South America.

Merritt is more accustomed to throwing four kilos in under-20 competition, but she made light of the change, unleashing an enormous personal best of 16.34 metres.

Her third-round throw dwarfed her previous personal best of 15.46 and was well in advance of the 15.70 qualifying mark set for Colombia. She now faces a tense month’s wait before discovering if she has made the flight to Santiago de Cali.

Given that Merritt is smaller than average shot-putter, the Peter Symonds College student from Newbridge, near Cadnam, is doing remarkably well to rank 11th in the world.

Not only that, she is still working on a new technique, guided by her coach Dave Callaway, whose daughter Samantha also put on her Sunday best, winning the under-15 girls’ javelin with a championship best 33.45 and the hammer with 33.07.

“I changed to doing the rotational shot from the linear technique last November and I’m still learning,” Merritt explained.

“My coach thinks it will take me two years to properly get to grips with it and I’m only seven months in.

“I owe so much to Dave Callaway. I’ve put two metres on my pb from last year and that’s down to all the hard work that’s gone in through the winter. Without Dave I couldn’t do it.”

With the kind permission of Hampshire Athletics, Merritt made a guest appearance in the under-15 boys competition at the county championships on Sunday.

Her longest throw of 15.35 was well short of her best but, by her own admission, she was still buzzing after Bedford and found it hard to concentrate.

There were no such problems for her little sister Anna who dominated the under-13 girls’ throws wearing the colours of Salisbury’s Godolphin School.

She won the shot with 9.47 and then catapulted herself up to UK number one with a personal best 28.36 in the discus. Not bad for a youngster whose first passion is show jumping!

Southampton AC’s Holly Pearce also had a weekend to remember,throwing 45.53 in the under-17 women’s hammer. It was personal best and a championship best, nudging Sophie Merritt’s 2014 mark of 41.68 off top spot in the record books.