Buoyed up by their excellent performances at the English Schools championships at Birmingham the week before, the Sussex under 17 teams recorded probably their best results in the South East Inter Counties match at Chelmsford
Facing all the major Counties they battled with at Birmingham like Surrey, Hampshire, Kent and Essex they did spectacularly well to finish second to Essex in both the Women’s and Men’s matches and a brilliant second overall, again to the home team.
Having lost Lizzie Korczak to the international School event at Swansea on the Saturday plus several other leading athletes this was an extraordinary performance.
Pyers Lockwood had also competed at the SIAB event the day before clocking a fine victory in the 400m hurdles in 54.63s did arrive at Chelmsford and collected some useful points in the 200m but anchored an impressive 4 x 400m relay victory at the end of the programme. Liam Dunne, Adam Firsht, Aaron Duncan and Pyers (49.50s) had a convincing win over the hosts in 3.25.48s. This is one of the fastest times ever by a Sussex team and the third fastest by a British team this season only bettered by the English and Welsh School teams at Swansea on Saturday.
At Swansea Lizzie Korczak threw a splendid 48.03m in the javelin event, but was squeezed into second place by the Scottish thrower Kirsty Costello.
Back at Chelmsford there were many personal bests in a series of fine performances with a large proportion of the Sussex team placing in the top three.
In the men’s events Ivo Pitts proved a strong winner in the javelin throw with 56.91m, while Luke Twigger also topped the 50 metre mark with 50.64m for second place in the “B” event. Joe Beal placed second in the hammer throw with 46.29m and there was another second place for Seb Wallace with a Pb of 13.67s in the 100m hurdles.
In the women’s events there were wins for Abigail Packham in the 80m hurdles in 11.57s as well as third place in the high jump with 1.55m, and clean sweeps for Ivy Spencer and Natasha Clark in the pole vault with 3.15m and a 3.05m (PB), Ruby Jerges and Cleo Tomlinson in the long jump with 5.46m and 5.42m and Rebekah Tyler and Millie Noyce in the shot put with 12.64 (PB) and 12.22m.
Harriet Bloor took second place in the 3000m with a PB of 10:25.04s, Lois Dooley was second in the 1500m steeplechase and Kelsey Sutherland was just one centimetre short of victory in the triple jump with 11.26m, whilst Harriet Armstrong won the “B” event with 11.13m (PB).
Patrick Apantaku, the team manager said “It was fantastic seeing the determination of athletes who wanted to compete despite feeling sick, struggling with injury, competing and winning the SIAB the day before."