Five-star Hydel top prep champs

Ryon Jones, Gleaner Writer

Hydel produced a number of brilliant performances at the National Stadium yesterday to carve their fifth consecutive lien on the Jamaica Independent Schools' Association (JISA) Inter-Prep Schools Track and Field Championship trophy.

Yesterday's grand performance lifted the Ferry-based school from sixth spot at the end of Day Two to secure their 10th title overall.

They ended the championship with 274 points, while Vaz (237), for a second consecutive year, had to settle for second. The top five was rounded out by Ardenne (157.5), Wolmer's (115) and Quest (103.50).

Against the odds

Hydel's head coach Corey Bennett was very happy to come out on top against the odds.

"It is a good feeling, we really wanted this one as the odds were stacked against us. The word on the street was that we could never win this one but it only motivated us to try harder and go for another one," said Bennett.

He was, however, not pleased that they had to come from behind to do it.

"It is unfortunate that it happened that way ... but we had to push on the last day." Bennett felt there was too much focus on track events this year and they will look to pay more attention to the field events in 2011.

Going into yesterday's final day of the three-day meet on 20 points, 35.5 behind leaders Ardenne and 28 adrift of Vaz, Hydel signalled their intention from early when Shanice Ricketts took the third event of the day, the girls' Class One 300m in a new meet record time of 41.44 seconds, bettering the previous mark of 42.05 set by Anna Kay Campbell of Our Lady of the Angels in 1998.

Second place went to Ayeshia Morgan (41.72 sec), also of Hydel, while Belair's Sydney Marshall (41.82) notched third.

Ricketts was confident that she would have been able to break the record.

"I felt good. I trained very hard so I knew that I would succeed," said Morgan.

Not to be outdone, Hydel's boys pooled together to establish a new record in the 800m sprint medley open. They won the event in 1:47.11 to smash the previous mark of 1:49.35, which was also set by Hydel last year. Vaz also dipped below the record to take second in 1:48.34 with Lannaman's (1:57.81) taking the bronze.

Smashing records

Hydel's boys were at it again in the Class Two 4x60m, eclipsing Vaz's record of 33.48 seconds, which was set in 2008, with their winning time of 33.32 seconds. Mona were also fast finishers with a time of 33.41 seconds while Wolmer's (33.57) were third.

Hydel closed out the championship in style as their Class Two 4x100m quartet lived up to expectations by smashing their own record, which they had set in the preliminaries of the event on the second day, by posting 51.25 to take the gold medal in the final. Vaz Prep also dipped under the previous record mark as they clocked 52.03 to take second, while Mona Prep were third.