Once again the weather was not friendly to the Sussex Schools Combined Events championships on Wednesday after last year unusually sunny conditions.
Steve (Rain man) King who has organised this event for a decade usually provides the rain, for this event, but this year he went one better and supplied a cold north wind to accompany the, at times heavy, showers.
Entries were down on recent years, particularly the U17s, but there was a nail-biting battle for honours in the Year 7 Girls Quadrathlon.
The newly crowned Sussex U13 long jump record holder, Cleo Tomlinson (Weald) and Ruby Jerges (Brighton College), who are normally team mates for the Horsham Blue Star club in their U13 team, had a great battle.
Jerges just got the edge in the opening event the 70m hurdles with 12.1s to 12.3s. and moved further ahead with a 6.13m shot putt to Tomlinson’s 5.91m but Tomlinson had the edge in the long jump with 4.75m to 4.69s to leave Jeges with an 18 points advantage.
Neither gave an inch in the final event, the 800m, where they fought tooth and nail all the way to cross the line locked together in 2:46.3s to give Jerges the title with 1818 points to Tomlinson’s 1800.
Horsham athletes also filled the top places in the Year 7 Boy’s with Sam Wallace (Forest) scoring 11348 points to Tanbridge’s Thomas Kimber’s 1075.
Joshua Loach (Hurstpierpoint College) won the Intermediate (U17) Boys Pentathlon and Katinka Morris (Willingdon) the girls crown while Adam Lindo (Downlands) took the Junior (U15) boy’s title.
Calysta Morris (Lewes Old Grammar) took the Girls Junior title from the reigning Year 7 champion Eli Middleton (Durrington).
Full results are on the results pages.
The Weekend
It is British League weekend time with the men contesting their second matches of the season on Saturday and the UK Women’s League on Sunday.
Crawley will be competing in Division two of the Men’s League while Brighton & Hove are in Division four and both teams did well to finish fourth in their opening match last. Although losing two of their leading scorers from the first match Crawley have a group of athletes back in the team and are aiming to at least better their first match placing. Both teams will be competing in a Double Fixture at Bedford.
Crawley is the only women’s team from Sussex in the UK Women’s League and they will be competing in their first match of the season in Division One at Bristol.
On Sunday the Sussex Master’s Championships are being held in conjunction with the Surrey event at Ewell Court.