HOLMWOOD Technical girls and Calabar boys dominated the High school section of the 28th Gibson Relays at the National Stadium on Saturday.
The Maurice Wilson-coached girls from Christiana in Manchester won three of the seven relays contested while the Red Hills Road-based Calabar crossed the line first in four races, only to be disqualified twice for changing the baton outside the zone.
Holmwood, led by World Junior 200m silver medallist Anneisha McLaughlin, won two of the three championship events, the Citibank 4x100m Class One in a record 44.81 seconds, this after they had earlier clocked 45.16 to erase Vere's 200 mark of 45.58. They also took the Port Authority 4x400m Open while Edwin Allen won the third championship event, the Esso 4x800m Open in 8:52.07 ahead of Holmwood (9:06.18) and St. Jago (9:38.40).
To add to their record breaking run in the sprint, Holmwood girls, running without McLaughlin, captured the Excedrin-sponsored 4x200m Open in 1:37.05 ahead of St. Jago (1:39.44) and St. Andrew (1:42.89).
BRUTAL DISPLAY
In what could be considered as a brutal display, Holmwood produced a magnificent run to close the girls section of Gibson Relays in style by taking the mile relay by some 15 metres.
In so doing, the quartet of Jerine Bolt, Sonita Sutherland, Nyoka Coley and McLaughlin stopped the clock at 3:39.24 to beat Edwin Allen (3:45.54) by almost six metres with Queen's (3:50.92) far back in third.
Holmwood's coach Maurice Wilson had mixed feelings about his team's performance.
"I was a little bit disappointed because I thought we would have had all four sprint relay teams to the final, but unfortunately we only got two."
He added: "When you are dealing with youngsters these are some of the things you have to expect, but its OK, I think it's a fairly good performance."
Speaking of the Class Three and Four 4x100m teams, Wilson said:
AVERAGE TEAMS
"These teams are just average teams and they are really trying, but I think they would have made it to the finals based of the character of the young ladies."
Unlike previous years, St. Jago's girls failed to win a relay, but coach Raymond 'KC' Graham said his team was affected by a lot of injuries and used the opportunity to experiment.
All of Calabar's victories came in the sprint relays, the first of which was the boys' Class Two 4x100m in 42.92 over Kingston College (43.05).
In the 4x200m Class One, Calabar timed 1:27.82 to beat St. George's (1:27.91) and Holmwood (1:28.17) while dishing out the same punishment to KC (1:36.09) and Wolmer's (1:46.19) in the Class Three event, but later found their effort wasn't accepted, which meant KC took the event.
They felt the punishment of the judges again after a big time mess up on the final changeover of the Class Four 4x200m. They ran 1:38.85 in the heats to break their one-year-old mark of 1:40.70 and crossed the finish line in 1:38.11 in the final, only to be disqualified for passing outside the area on the final leg.
In the final boys' championship events, Wolmer's closed the show with an upset win over hot favourites Holmwood to win the Sherwin Williams-sponsored 4x400m in 3:14.97. Holmwood looked totally out of sorts while finishing second (3:15.59) without former Winston Jones High student Omar Brown, who is not eligible for Champs either as he has to sit out this year.
Prior to the Gibson Relays, Holmwood's coach Edward Hector said:
"I don't think we will have many problems, not that we are disrespecting any team but we have superior depth, both quality and quantity."
However, Hector admitted that Wolmer's is the team right now.
Holmwood ran 3:17.57 to win at Western Relays and 3:23.3 at Alpart/STETHS Invitational.
"I don't think anything went wrong because we ran 3:15.59 and they came better than us this time around," Hector said.
Holmwood clocked 41.51 for their only victory, which came in the Pepsi championship Class One 4x100m which was helped by a bad baton change on final leg by St. George's (41.56).
St. Jago's boys took the PUMA-sponsored 4x800m, another championship event in 7:46.13 over Holmwood (7:50.44).
-Anthony Foster
