BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – NOT only did Washington Archibald High School win the Inter-School Championships with 22 gold medals and a cash prize of EC$5 000, but they also topped the other schools in the records broken at the meet.
The St. Kitts-Nevis Amateur Athletics Association’s TDC Interschool Championship was held at the Silver Jubilee Stadium last weekend (March 23-25) with a turnout of some 6 000 fans and supporters.
The WAHS Wildcats broke records in a number of categories including the U-17 Male 4X400M Relay in a time of 3.33.02 seconds, the U-17 Male 4X100M Relay in 43.98 seconds and the U-15 Male 4X400M in 3.51.47 seconds.
Clairvon Kelly broke the record in the male high jump with 1.92M, Xavier Francis won the U-17 Male 200M with a record time of 22.27, Josiah Oyebefun won the U-17 Male 100M in 1.12.
Ashika Williams broke the record for the U-17 Female Javelin Throw with a distance of 25.04M while Harrigan Burton in the U-15 Male category broke the Shot Put record with a distance of 11.68M.
Basseterre High School athletes took second spot with seven records.
Of the seven records broken, five were in the female category and the other two were broken by Rasheed Moore and Trivon Rogers. Moore broke the U-20 110M Hurdles in 16.58.1.3 and Rogers clocked 2.12.2 in the U-15 800M.
Shenella Mitchum broke two records in the U-17 Female 800M and 1500M with times of 2:20.30 and 5:6.36 respectively.
Keressa Eddy in the U-17 category broke the 300M Hurdles in a time of 47.16, while Kadijah Webster broke the 100M Hurdles record for the U-20 category with a time of 17.91 and Georgia Spencer broke the U-15 Shot Put record with a throw of 10.35M.
Verchilds High School was third with five records, four of which were broken by females. The lone male was Darielle Warner who clocked 59.39 in the U-17 400M Hurdles.
Shanice Elliott, Sharlene Williams, Laricia Ottley and Rosalie Pringle made their school proud by breaking records in the U-15 200M with a time of 26.03, U-15 Javelin with a distance of 24.42M, U-17 Discus Throw with a distance of 24.88M, and U-20 800M in 2:23.04 respectively.
Five records were broken by students of the Charles E. Mills Secondary School and three of them were by females.
Stavia Lewis broke the record in the U-20 Discus Throw with a distance of 31.10M, Alivia Barzey in a time of 68.87 broke the record for the U-20 400M Hurdles, and Jakeishal Leader tallied 3 085 points to set a record in the U-15 Heptathlon, a new event added to the Championships.
For the males, Nathaniel Huggins broke the record in the U-17 Long Jump with a distance of 6.71M and Jermaine Francis equaled the record for U-15 High Jump Male with a height of 1.73M.
Aziel Smithen of Cayon High School set the record in the U-15 Male Heptathlon with 3 823 points, while Kerisha Powell of Charlestown Secondary covered a distance of 31.94M in the U-20 Female Javelin Throw, and CARIFTA gold medalist Adrian Williams set a record in the U-20 Male Javelin Throw with a distance of 62.30M.
According to SKNAAA’s PRO Evris Huggins, last year’s and this year’s championships were very impressive, especially in the amount of record broken during that period.
He said 29 records were broken in 2011 as against this year’s 28.
Huggins said that several factors that contributed to the large amount of records being broken include an increase level of competitiveness among the athletes and an increase number of trained coaches over the past two years.
“We also think the contributing factors to the success of the athletes are the performance by our overseas-based athletes…the gentlemen who were successful in actually making the podium on the international stage,” he said.
The PRO also said that the execution of events was near impeccable except for technical glitches involving the photo finish.
“We were streaming the games for the first time and a number of spectators were logging onto the WIFI network that was slowing down the photo finish drastically. So there were delays between the events due to photo finishing equipment challenges. However, we were able to get some of the problems temporarily fixed and hoping that all will go well for the RAMS Championships this weekend,” he said.
The RAMS Inter-Primary School Championships is the next event organised by the SKNAAA and will be held from March 30 to April 1.
