ATHLETICS: Warwick athlete Emily Bass is crediting her silver performance at the Australian All Schools Athletics Championships to a longer and tougher training season this year.

The Scots PGC College student returned home from the event, held in Townsville, with a personal best and a silver medal in the under16s 200m hurdles event.

Emily was competing as a member of the Queensland team.

"I was so happy with my result, I was not expecting to do that well at all," she said.

"I made it through last year and came seventh so this is a big improvement.

"This year I started training earlier in the year than I did the year before; it was a big help."

The Townsville heat added to the challenge of the race.

"Hurdles are a technical sport," Emily said.

"Anything can happen in a race.

"The leader of the 200m race did it in 28 seconds, she was really quick."

Emily finished not far behind with a time of 29.51 seconds.

The 15-year-old first got a taste for hurdles through Little Athletics when she was six years old.

"I started taking it more seriously a couple of years ago," Emily said.

Her success is the result of close to six hours of training a week, which includes travelling to Toowoomba for two training sessions.

Emily, who will start Year 11 next year, said juggling training commitments and schoolwork was no easy task, but with dreams to make it as an athlete she knows hard work is a must - especially if she wishes to reach the same heights as her idol, Olympic hurdler Sally Pearson.

Emily said she would be scaling back the training over the Christmas break and picking up again next year.

"I am going to Sydney in March next year for another nationals event," she said.

Emily said her training program would be changed slightly next year as she increased the distance of her races from 90m to 100m and from 200m to 400m.