Top three spot in Brighton pleases young Eastbourne athletes

Normally stronger in the track events, their latest outing saw the team achieve many top-three placings in field event athletes. Several new team members were among the top performers.

In the field events, there were wins from Adam Churchyard (discus A 22.69m), Eva Grandhi (high jump B 1.35m), Ollie MacCormick (discus B 12.35m) and Ilya Korchev (long jump B 4.04m) which gave the club maximum points.

These were backed up by second places from Josie Usher (high jump A 1.40m), Tom Petherick (shot B 4.96m) and Raya Petrova (shot B 4.27m) and third places from Toby Shepherd (long jump B 5.07m), Katy Brown (javelin A 19.38m) and Oscar Mizen (javelin A 24.98m).

Top performer on the track was distance specialist and recent English Schools Championship participant Ilya Korchev, with another clear win in the 1,500m in an outstanding time of 4:23.8s.

Other top three finishes came from Ethan Howcroft (100m B third 13.0s), Toby Shepherd (200m A 24.9s), Oscar Mizen (300m A 41.4s, 80mH A 14.6s), Eva Grandhi (100m A 13.3s; 200m B second 28.9), Josie Usher (100m B first 13.5s; 200m A third 28.4), and Jemima Scott (300m B third 49.4s).

Most of the young athletes competed in the maximum allowed total of three events in order to score as many points as possible.

And in addition to those mentioned above, valuable contributions to the team total came from Freda Pearce, Hannah Ansera, Aoife Cherrill and Louise Penrose.

As usual, the 4x100m relays provided an exciting finale to the evening and the Eastbourne teams achieved third place in the boys’ race (51.7s) and fourth in the girls’ race (56.3s).

Final points totals were: Crawley 348, Brighton and Hove 318, Eastbourne Rovers 255, Haywards Heath 220, Worthing 205, Chichester 160, Lewes 112, Horsham 107, Hastings 14.

Eastbourne will be fielding another strong team for the final league fixture on September 2, with the ever-improving athletes, many of whom with another year in this under-15 age group, looking forward to an exciting match when they will be aiming to close the gap on second-placed Brighton.

Pictured on the back page are the boys’ team – left to right: Adam Churchyard, Ethan Howcroft, Oscar Mizen, Tom Petherick, Ilya Korchev, Toby Shepherd.

Pictured above are the girls’ team: Back row: Hannah Ansera, Louise Penrose, Raya Petrova, Jemima Scott, Aoife Cherrill, Eva Grandhi. Front row: Freda Pearce, Katy Brown, Josie Usher.