2018 Maribyrnong Sports Academy Sports Director’s award winner Tully Watt has finished off a big week by being crowned National Champion at the Australian Modern Pentathlon Nationals in Brisbane on the weekend.
Tully was part of the largest Australian Championships in over a decade with 34 competitors taking part in the event.
At 17 years of age Tully is the second youngest National Champion in the sport with only Olympic Champion Chloe Esposito winning a senior National title at a younger age. Tully told the Modern Pentathlon website that she couldn’t be happier with her results, “I’m very excited with today as I got the personal bests I wanted.”
In the Swimming Long Course, Tully started in the lead and never relinquished it, performing a best time of 2.26.85 which was under her target time of 2.27. She had an amazing 24 victories and only 10 defeats in the Fencing piste and had a faultless clear round in the Show Jumping. While she did incur a 30 point penalty for not jumping at the maximum height she still held a four second lead going into the laser run.
Tully was happy with her overall performance, “My fencing went really well and there was probably only two bouts where I mucked up but I got a lot of competitors I didn’t expect to, so that was really exciting.
“The ride I was a bit worried about because I was jumping lower (1.00m) I thought I would drop behind but that went really smoothly, and I’m really happy with my combined time.”
Tully finished off the day with a huge Laser Run personal best of 13 minutes 30 seconds. She will now focus on the World Under 19 Championships later in the year.
Only 3 days before hand, Tully was the duel winner of the Maribyrnong Sports Academy Sports Director Award for 2018 with Taekwondo student Reba Stewart for their efforts in 2018. The MSA Sports Director award is given to a student athlete who have held a Grade point average of over 8 for the year and have represented their state or country through the 12 month period. The award also takes into consideration high school workload, injury, rehab, and the athletes contribution to the wider school community and follow the Academy core values of Respect, Honesty, Community, leadership and determination.
Sections of this story have been taken from a story posted on Modern Pentathlon Australia’s website.