It was silver and bronze for the Sussex Girls at the English Schools Combined Events championships at Bedford on Sunday.
Overnight Katie Garland was lying second in the senior girl’s Heptathlon championships and just a few points clear of fellow Sussex athlete and training companion Beth Crocker, one hundred points behind Warwickshire’s Annabelle Pask.
Garland came out on Sunday morning with a fine long jump of 5:61m and closed the gap on the leader but a 32 metre plus javelin throw in the penultimate discipline by Pask assured her of victory as Garland could only reach 26.65m, which was a personal best and blew her chances of gold.
She closed a little again in the 800m run clocking 2:26.7s but her total points score of 4802 to the winner’s 4918 points meant she came home, from her final Schools competition, with a splendid silver medal.
Crocker was able to close slightly on her team mate leaping 5.55m, throwing 26.51s and clocking 2:26.5s to take an excellent bronze medal with 4778 points.
Matt Smith, who had only qualified for the intermediate Octathlon final after an athlete dropped out, did well to maintain his 14th overnight placing achieving a personal best total of 4439 points.
Sadly Amber Anning (Roedean), who was hoping for a medal in the junior girl’s pentathlon, withdrew on Friday because of injury.
ESAA English Schools' Race Walk Results
There was a fine result also for Emily Ghose (Upllands). The 2014 bronze medallist went one better this year taking the silver medal in the intermediate girls 3K race in a time of 16:31.15.
She was a minute behind the winner Sophie Lewis-Ward of London and almost a minute ahead of the bronze medallist.
In the 5K intermediate boys Ollie Hopkins (Chailey) just missed out on a medal coming in fourth with a personal best time of 28:10.32.