Sussex youngsters scooped up a plethora of medals at the South of England U15 and U17 championships at Lee Valley over the weekend, with some twenty youngsters on the podium and four of them achieving gold.
Conditions were fairly mild for Saturday’s events but Sunday produced a strong head wind for most of the track races.
Charlie De’Vall Grice (Phoenix) just missed a medal in an exciting 1500m final at the European Games in Berlin last night.
Having qualified comfortably behind Edinburgh’s Chris O’Hare on the Wednesday, Grice ran a sensible race and was always in contention.
Amazingly the talented 17-year-old Norwegian, Jakob Ingebrigtsen, the youngest of the three siblings who had all made the final, led by the half way point and instead of his elder brothers pulling through to win, he kept his nose in front to take the title in 3:38.10s.
Many Sussex youngsters are expected to travel to the Lee Valley Stadium this weekend for the U17 and U15 South of England Track and Field championships.
Following their superb performances at last month’s England Schools' Championships when the Sussex Schools U15 Girls won the team title and the Boys team finished second, there are high hopes for some of the athletes. That is if this most important event, does not clash with family holidays.
A depleted Crawley Women’s team put up a good fight in the final UKWALg match at Leigh, Manchester on Sunday to finish fourth.
Kim Baptiste and team manager Jo Rowland emerged as the only winners on the day with Baptiste, after being squeezed into third place in the 100m in 12.13s steamed to a fine 200m win in 24.12s.
Rowland, who not only manages the team but also competes in several events at each match finished fourth in the long jump with 5.59m, and third in the high jump clearing 1.60m came out on top in the shot putt with a fine effort of 13.46.
Sussex AA is introducing an inter counties representative match at the Brighton 10k on Sunday, November 18.
The Sussex AA team will be selected and will compete against teams from at least 8 other southern counties.
The Crawley senior men’s team fought hard at Bournemouth but failed to get that final promotion place in Division two of the British Athletics League on Saturday.
A full strength Kent A.C team stormed to team victory ahead of League leaders and hosts, Bournemouth, scoring 323 points to 319 with Crawley in third tem spot with 292 points.
The final League placing were Bournemouth with 30 League points, Kent second with 23 (1137 match points) and these two gain promotion with Crawley third with 21 (1127) to cap an excellent season for the Sussex Club.
There was a mixed bag of results for Sussex teams at the last YDL Lower League fixtures of the season. Unfortunately Chichester Runners will be relegated and Brighton & Hove have a tense wait to see whether they will be promoted following their division win.
The final results are still being scrutinised so some information stated below is subject to change.
There are tough battles ahead this weekend for the Crawley senior League teams.
The men travel to Bournemouth on Saturday for their Division 2 British League match and are currently lying joint second on the League table with Havering and Kent A.C and could gain promotion to Division one.
The battle however is not just between these three as Glasgow, who are fifth in the table could well leap frog over them if they come with a full strength team.
Crawley’s Kim Baptiste achieved a double gold medal in the English Championships, which incorporated the Inter-county Championships, at a wet and windy Manchester over the weekend.
The Crawley sprinter is certainly enjoying a purple patch at the moment and were it not for excessive winds she would have again improved the Sussex 100m record.
Baptiste eased through her 100 and 200 metres heats before cruising to impressive wins clocking a windy 11.35s for the 100 metres title and 23.40s for the 200 metre crown.
Storms cleared and the sun shone, along with a very gusty wind, on the young Sussex athletes competing in the South of England Derek Crookes Under 13 Inter-Counties fixture. Leading competitors from 13 counties took part in the annual event, held at the Kingsmeadow stadium in Kingston on Saturday.