Despite losing many of their top athletes to the BUCS on Saturday the Crawley team did well to avoid the relegation area in the first of this season’s British Athletics League matches at Yeovil.
In what was a very tight Division two match just 70 points separated the top seven teams with Bournemouth winning with 322 points from Havering’s 303 with Crawley finishing just ten points adrift of Kent’s fifth place on 272 points and Crawley placing sixth ahead of Glasgow and Rugby.
Most teams seemed to suffer with the clash with BUCS but Crawley managed to notch up five “A” string winning performances including a double middle distance victory for Tom Niner.
Newcomer Sam Shore had set the team off in the right style by winning the opening event, the 400m hurdles in 55.03s and he was also to finish fourth in the high hurdles in 16.19s.
Niner followed on soon after with a repeat of the Southern League victory for Brighton & Hove last month with a controlled 1:55.3s and later in the programme he showed equal controll when coasting to victory in the 1,500m with 3:57.52s and Chris Dodd from Eastbourne won the “B” race in 3:59.38s.
There was another fine javelin victory for Scott Staples, who is still in the U20 age group and has switched from Lewes to Crawley. He again topped the sixty metre mark with 62.65m, a convincing win.
The fifth “A” victory came in the final event of the day, the 4 x 400m relay where Niclas Baker, Sam Shore, Chris Dodd and Charlie Baldwin chalked up a convincing victory over Kent in 3:22.30s.
There were also a couple of more than useful second places with Leigh Walker again clearing 4.00m. in the pole vault event and Sam Heawood heaving the shot 16.04m.
Their next match will be on 2nd June at Rugby.
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