- Paul Reid
Draion McNain of Mannings wins his heat in the Class 3 100m at Boys Eliminations at the COCAA Western Champs. McNain is also in the finals of the 200m and the long jump and is favoured to win all three.
Paul A. Reid, Staff Reporter
WESTERN BUREAU:
DEFENDING CHAMPIONS Munro College have taken a 25 points lead after eleven finals as the County of Cornwall Athletics Association's (COCAA) Western High Schools Athletics championships got underway with the boys eliminations at Herbert Morrison Technical on Thursday.
The second day of the meet that is held over three days will be next Tuesday with the staging of the girls' eliminations at St Elizabeth Technical with the finals set for the Catherine Hall stadium on February 25.
Munro piled up points in the field events to finish the first day on 98 points, well ahead of second placed Mannings-73, Cornwall College- 69, Herbert Morrison-551/2 and St Elizabeth Technical (STETHS) - 311/2 filling out the top five places.
Interestingly the top four occupied the same position after the first day last year with STETHS taking over from Grange Hill for fifth this year.
The finals promise some exciting and high quality performances after some good performances on Thursday.
William Knibb Memorial's Usain Bolt, Green Island's Damion Young, Munro College's Conray Wright and Manning's Draion McNain all qualified for at least two finals with good performances.
Bolt, the IAAF World Junior Games (WJG) 200m gold medallist won his Class One 200m semi-finals in an easy 21.67 seconds and had the best 400m time as well.
Young qualified with the best mark in the Class One long jump with a 6.99m effort and cruised to a 10.8 seconds clocking in his semi-final in the 100m just ahead of Herbert Morrison's Ryan Wright.
Munro's Wright made it to both 100m and 200m finals in Class Two with the fastest times while McNain looks set to win the 100m, 200m and long jump events in Class Three.
The 14 year-old McNain is continuing where he left off last year when he won three titles on his way to being crowned the Class Four champion and was well ahead of the rest of the field in all his events.
On Thursday, Herbert Morrison's Class Four athlete Gerald Duncan staked a claim for the future when he won the high jump with a mark of 1.65m, just failing at 1.70m and also took the long jump with 5.22m. His height in the high jump event was the best in the region in at least five years.
Other top performance were recorded by Cornwall's Devon Evans who won the class three high jump with 1.75m while Munro College's CARIFTA Games representative Kurth Francis won the Class One Discuss with a throw of 48.54m.
Other winners were Munro's Marvin Wright in the Class 2 high jump - 1.85m; Orlando Marshall of Mannings in the Class 2 discus - 35.78m; STETHS - Alwyn Brown in the Class three discuss- 30.34m; Hickel Woolery of Mannings in the Class One shot put - 13.88m; Oliver Slowley of Munro in the Class 2 shot put - 12.14m; Cornwall's Daniel Absalom won a hard-fought 5,000m in 16.54.03 seconds after running the 800m and 1500m earlier in the day while Munro's Cosmo Stephens took the 3,000m in 11.06.17 seconds.
Points standings after 11 events: Munro - 98, Mannings - 73, Cornwall - 69, Herbert Morrison - 55 1/2, STETHS 31 1/2, Maldon - 23, William Knibb - 10, Lewisville - 9, Muschett - 8, Green Island - 5, Rusea's and Balaclava - 4.
