It may have been rather overcast and a slight chill in the wind but there was plenty of sunshine coming from the youngsters at the final of the Sussex under 13 League final at K2 on Sunday.
Just one League record tumbled during the afternoon, to make it four records during the season, and that was by the hosts Crawley who set a new clocking of 53.2s in the boys relay and that just put the icing on the top of a successful, but desperately close, defence of their league title.
In a neck and neck battle all afternoon Crawley totalled 401 points to hold off Brighton & Hove who scored 395.5 points with Horsham Blue Star in third place with 344 points after an even closer battle with Chichester who scored 342. Worthing took the Plate award with 258 points.
There were a couple of near misses as far as records were concerned, in the boys field events with Matthew O’Dwyer (Horsham) missing the long jump record by one centimetre when leaping 5.18m. And he then took second place to Crawley’s Daniel Tewogbade in the 150m clocking 19.6s to the winners 19.5s while in the javelin throw Brighton & Hove’s Luke Twigger got within half of a metre of the record with a personal best throw of 39.44m.
Tewogdade went on to win the high jump clearing 1.43m and was also a member of the record breaking relay team
Three girls notched up double victories with Ruby Jerges (Horsham) winning the 70m hurdles in 12.2sec and long jumped 4.68m, having set the record at 4.89m earlier in the season while Club mate Cleo Tomlinson won the B long jump with 4.66m and the high jump with 1.41m.
Ruby Anning (Brighton & Hove) who had set a new 150m record earlier in the season completed a sprint double by taking the 75m in 10.4s and the 150m in, an almost leisurely for her, of 20.7s.
Without doubt the closest battle came in the Boys 1000m where Dylan Hanslow (Crawley) appeared to have run a perfect race sprinting past Jack Gardner from Lewes in the last fifty metres only for Gardner to come again and snatch victory on the line though both were timed at 3:04.0s.
Neil Boniface from Horsham Joggers, who is now a veteran, has been a regular leading Sussex athlete since his teens, won his first Sussex track title when he won the Senior 3000m crown leading from start to finish.
Clocking 8:49.4s he finished comfortably clear of James Turner (Brighton & Hove) who clocked 8:55.2s with Reuben Hoyte (Phoenix), third across the line to win the U20 title in 9:12.2s
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