Langwith athletes fall at the final hurdle
Suprise results from all track and field events kept the tension high after College Sport’s closest season. Spectators were hounded into clutching a frisbee for their college or found themselves being ushered towards the javelin.
In a previous sports rep meeting, representatives debated whether to make athletics day worth double the points. The ultimate decision was to just offer seven points for the entire day as with any other college sport. This does not downplay the day’s importance to the overall result.
Ultimately, Vanbrugh dominated. They won by 29 points with a score of 153. Not only did their athletes put in great performances, they were able to enter an athlete in every event – both male and female – which greatly helped their cause. James followed with 134 points after tying with Vanbrugh in the field competition with 66 points apiece. Halifax followed with 120.5 points and Derwent, Goodricke, Langwith, and Alcuin brought up the rear.
The afternoon was comprised of the traditional track and field events plus tug-of-war, ultimate Frisbee and beach volleyball. The points from each event were added up to determine the overall winner.
The tug-of-war competition was no contest. Derwent dominated all opposition for the second year in a row; they didn’t concede a single pull. The last pull of the day re-ignited the rivalry between Langwith and Vanbrugh as they scrabbled for third place. After each side won two rounds, Langwith came through with a valiant effort to pull down the Vanbrugh side.
The day started with the ultimate Frisbee tournament – a game that few of the college athletes had any prior experience with, on the Astroturf. James won the day to beat Vanbrugh 5-2 in the final and claim the seven points the competition was worth.
The final non-traditional field event, beach volleyball, actually played on the lawn, proved surprising. Vanbrugh and Langwith, the top two finishers in the regular season volleyball were both eliminated in the first round, leaving James to claim victory over a second event.
The rest of the field events proved to be closely contested with no college dominating. Yet Goodricke was able to claim firsts in both the men’s and women’s javelin.
The track events proved as competitive as expected. The men’s 100 metre sprint, one of the most anticipated events, was incredibly close even from the qualifying rounds. In fact, a faster time was run in the heats than in the finals, where the top three finishers were within milliseconds of one another. Derwent eventually claimed victory.
The rest of the short distances played out with James’s Jo Staples winning the women’s 100m. Derwent came first in the men’s 200m. Langwith claimed the men’s 400m, while Halifax dominated the women’s 400m.
The distance races began with the 3000m race: eight brutal laps around the track. Some of the men brought along head phones to make the run more bearable. Vanbrugh – the favourites after winning the men’s cross country earlier in the year – fell to both James and Derwent who came in first and second.
James also won the women’s 800m, while Halifax claimed the men’s. The men’s 800m proved quite a race as the pace barely slowed from a sprint for both laps of the track.
Halifax claimed the men’s 1500m race with Vanbrugh finishing a close second. Vanbrugh was able to claim the lead in the second lap of the women’s 1500m and maintain the lead until the finish.
Though Vanbrugh only won one individual track event, they gained a great deal of points from their success in the relays. They claimed victory in both the men’s 4x100m and 4x400m races and come in third in the women’s 4x100m. The women’s 4x100m proved a close race between the James and Goodricke squads, butthe pace of Jo Staples – who had already excelled in the individual sprint – proved decisive.
Defending champions James’s last minute efforts pushed them to the top of the field events. But Vanbrugh’s full participation handed them the day, leaving Langwith to lick their wounds and the title agonzingly close to their grasp.
Loading ...