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.
Chichester Runners and Horsham AC travelled to Kingsmeadow for their West 1 match hosted by Kingston. Chichester battled bravely but went into the final match at the bottom of the table and that is how they ended the day, with 1213 points. They will move down to the West 2 division next season. Horsham Blue Stars, with 1928.5 points, secured third overall behind Team Dorset and Guildford and Godalming.
Performance highlights at Kingsmeadow included; Horsham under-15 boys’ Seb Wallace and Hari Brogan winning the ‘A’ and ‘B’ High Jump respectively, both with personal bests of 1.78m, Chichester’s Ollie Beach’s 40.15m discus, Horsham’s Dan Dearden with a 3.50m pole vault and his club mate under-13 Madeleine Way’s 4.46m Long Jump.
Worthing were hosting the West 2 match. The club had some excellent individual results although their final placing was sixth with 1363.5 points. Bournemouth AC and New Forest Juniors have dominated this division and they won with an overall total of 2246.5.
There were stand out performances from Ethan Nicholson in the ‘B’ 100m where he sped to an 11.7s victory. His clubmate Ethan Craven ran a swift 11.9s to win the ‘A’ race. Stan Smith raced to a personal best of 23.7s over 200m. Hope Yelling topped 1.50m for a High Jump win and Chardonnay Bowles launched the javelin out to 36.22m to take top spot in the javelin.
East Grinstead and Hastings were at Woodford for their East 2 division fixture. The home club Woodford Green and Essex Ladies were the winners with 2324 points, East Grinstead were 5th with 1580 and Hastings sixth with 1055.5.
EGR's under-13 Grace McCullogh ran a personal best of 10.37s to win the 75m, threw 8.81m for first place in the shot and ran another PB of 20.80s for second over 150m. Meanwhile, Hastings under-15 Delicia Pascall ran a half second PB over 200m, winning in a time of 26.28s.
Crawley were in Croydon at the Premier 2 fixture and in an extremely tense battle dead heated with Portsmouth, as both teams scored 473.5 points. However, overall Portsmouth just slipped past, pushing Crawley into fourth place, though the total score on the YDL portal shows Crawley scored more points, but fewer league points. Herne Hill Harriers won that division with 19.5 League points (2000.5 points).
Under-13 Charlotte Wormley reinforced her place at the top of the UK rankings with a sparkling 3:50.3 run over 1200m, which is the third fastest time run in that age group this season behind her own rankings leading 3:49.4.
Brighton & Hove AC hosted their final East 1 league match at Withdean stadium. This was the first YDL fixture of the season, which they did not win. A last match surge from Basildon AC gave them victory on the day with 583.5 to Brighton’s 539. However, Brighton were the overall league winners and now go into a paper final against the top teams in Central 1 and West 1 (Team Bedfordshire and Guildford & Godalming) to see which two teams will be promoted to Premier 2.
There were leading performances from under-15's Harvey Grant with a personal best of 2:05.2 over 800m and for Ruby Anning with two wins and a best of 25.4s for 200m then 42.2s in her first 300m and for under-13 Dulcie Yelling with a 33.21m javelin throw.
by Melanie Anning
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