The Upper Age group of the Youth Development League take centre stage this weekend when they line up for their second match of the season at venues across the Southern Counties.
In Premier Two Crawley will be competing at Reading while in South West One A both Team Sussex and Brighton & Hove undertake the long journey to Poole for their match.
Horsham Blue Star will be in action at Bexley for their North East Two match while Chichester head out to Southampton for their South West Two match.
All these matches take place on Saturday while several Sussex athletes will be competing in the Loughborough International meeting including Robbie Fitzgibbon and Spencer Thomas (Brighton Phoenix) who will be competing for the England Junior team over 1,500 and 800m respectively, both were in great form at the BMC races at the “Phoenix Open Meeting” at Withdean on Wednesday.
The BMC races are all paced to ensure fast times and Thomas set a personal best when winning the “A” race from namesake Max from Hastings winning in 1:50.13s to 1:52.26s.
In virtually perfect conditions it was hoped that Spencer would break 1:50 but it will be just a matter of time for him and if conditions are good it could be this weekend at Loughborough.
Archie Davis (Phoenix) who is still in the Under 17 age group also chalked up one of many personal bests during the evening finishing fourth in 1:52.40s while Fitzgibbon was just one hundredth of an second outside his best in 1:52.56s.
Amongst a plethora of personal best performances there were also several English Schools Standards including Kiera Aslett (Hastings) who clocked 2:18.57s for her 800 metres, Sian Driscoll from Crowborough who recorded 2:14.31s in her race, Tom Eames (Brighton & Hove) with 2:05.04s while in the 1500m Almi Nerurkar (Phoenix) was timed at 4:45.75s in the 1500m and club mate Billy White won the 2,000m steeplechase in 6:09.70s.
After placing second in the “A” 800 metre race Max Thomas (Hastings) ended the evening winning the 3,000m race from Brighton & Hove’s Stephen Ferroni and Howard Bristow in 8:35.63 to 8:38.51s and 8:38.71s respectively.