MAEGAN Hopkins is proving that older sister Jessica is not the only athlete in the Witham siblings' household to be a UK rankings topper.

The Hopkins sisters are certainly making an impact on the UK junior lists and showed that they are hitting early season form as both claimed golden glory and set new personal records at the Essex and Eastern Indoor Athletics Championships at Lee Valley.

Both are pupils at Maltings Academy in Witham and train with Chelmsford Athletics Club, with Maegan competing in the under-13s age group at the joint county and regional competition, while multi-eventer Jessica was continuing in her first year at under-17 level.

Jessica, who is currently ranked number one in the country in under-17 pentathlon, said: "The weekend started with the shot putt where I threw 13.42 metres, which was enough to get me gold for both Essex and the Eastern region and I also beat my previous championship record of 13.11m.

"Next was Maegan’s shot putt for under-13 girls; she threw a huge PB (personal best) of 10.80 metre, beating her previous PB by nearly half a metre.

"She also gained two gold medals and beat the championship record by 1.4 metres as well as claiming the Chelmsford Athletics Club record and Maltings Academy school record.

"It was also enough to bring her to the top of the UK rankings.

"After the shot putt events was the 60 metre hurdles where I had to run a heat, semi-final and final.

"In the heats, I ran a time of 9.05 seconds and as I was the fastest in my race, it was enough for me to go into the semi-finals where I ran 9.0 seconds.

"That was just 0.01 seconds off of my all-time best, but in the finals, I managed to run a PB time of 8.94 seconds, which was enough to get me two silver medals to close the first day of competition."

Jessica had already seen medal successes across a number of disciplines at the South of England AA Indoor Championships and London Under-17 Games last month and continued to build her growing reputation on the second day of the Essex and Eastern Region event at Lee Valley.

She added: "Day two started with high jump where I jumped a height of 1.65 metres and this was enough to get me both gold medals for Essex and Eastern.

"Finally was the long jump where I jumped 5.25 metres for two bronze medals.

"I would like to say a huge thank you to the Little Braxted Community and Educational Fund, Essex And Southend Charitable Fund and the Ron Pickering Memorial fund for their generosity in allowing me a grant that contributes to competitions like these as well as training needs.

"Also to Chelmsford athletics for providing amazing indoor and outdoor training facilities and coaches of all kinds."