The Crawley Athletic Club gained promotion to Southern Premier One division of the Upper Age group of the Youth Development League at Norwich on Sunday.
The Sussex club finished second in the final match of the season to Team Norfolk which confirmed their second position in the final League table and this assured promotion to Premier One for next season.
The Upper Age Group league caters for U20 and U 17 athletes and support, throughout the divisions, has been patchy this season.
Crawley however having been managing to put out nearly full teams all season and has been rewarded for their efforts.
Team Norfolk scored 22 league points to Crawley’s 19 with Stevenage in third place on 14 points.
There were some good victories for Crawley athletes notably an U17 Pole vault/80m hurdles double for Natasha Purchas with 3.50m and 12.22s respectively and a comfortable U20 double for Owen Wyeth over 400m in 53.34s and 2:02.24s 800 m.
Brighton & Hove were also second, to the home club, in their South West One A clash at Croydon but they were not in line for promotion and indeed finished the season in sixth place with 12 points just one place and five points ahead of Team Sussex (Lewes/East Grinstead/Haywards Heath). Team Sussex will drop down to a lower division next year.
Ben Hawkes notched up a hat trick of U17 throws victories for Brighton & Hove putting the shot 12.23m, throwing the discus 44.35m and the hammer 59.42m while Livvy Connor, for Team Sussex, won her almost obligatory U20 pole vault clearing 3.55s and then steamed to a 26.82s 200 metres victory.
There was also relegation for Horsham Blue Stars in North East One at Medway despite some fine performances in the U20 events with Tabitha Lee winning the triple jump with 10.16m and the “B” high jump at 1.55m after Lucy Milnthorpe had cleared the same height to win the “A” jump.
Chichester travelled to Portsmouth in South West two and finished in sixth team spot but will remain in the same league for next year.
Highlight here was a splendid U17 sprint double for Alyssa White in 12.1s and 25.2s.
Crawley will be holding another “Open Meeting” at K2 this coming Wednesday evening.
If you have any queries or want more information regarding this post, please Email Reg Hook.