8-9 July 2005 Luke Evans & Sean Duffill at English School Champs

Sean & Luke sprint for Warwickshire in English Championships

Sean Duffill & Luke Evans competed at the recent English Schools Championships at the Alexander Stadium in Birmingham as part of the Warwickshire team.

In the 200m for inter-boys Sean was running against the best 200m sprinters in England and most of them a year older than him. In the early morning heats Sean came 3rd with a new p.b. of 22.51 seconds to qualify for the semi’s. In the semi-final with 100m left to run Sean was near the back of the field, but somehow found some extra strength and stormed through the field to finish 2nd, and another p.b. of 22.44 seconds to get to the final. The final was a very close and fast race and it took a photo-finish to decide finishing positions. Sean came 6th with yet another p.b. of 22.34 seconds which got him a national standard time. The times between 3rd and 7th had a margin of only 0.21s which shows how close the race was on the line. Sean was very pleased with his achievement and can’t wait until next years championships.

Luke also had a really enjoyable and successful weekend, competing for Warwickshire. The 200m heats and semi-final were on Friday 8th July.  In the heats Luke came 4th and qualified 10th fastest for the semi finals with a time of 23.41 seconds.  This time beat his previous PB (23.96 s) by over half a second (also beating Daniel Fagan’s three year old U15 Bromsgrove and Redditch A.C. record which stood at 23.69s). In the semi final Luke finished 5th with a time of 23.68 seconds.  Unfortunately he missed qualifying for the final by just 0.03 of a second.

So, Saturday ended up being 4x100m relay day.  Warwickshire had a reasonably good team considering the small size of the county and the squad.  The relay team had to run the heat without their usual “anchor man” due to a clash of events.  However Luke anchored the team to the final as 6th fastest qualifiers in a time of 46.02 seconds.

In the final the team returned to full strength, Luke running the third leg.  All the team ran beyond themselves with perfect baton changes.  The team came second in the final, silver medals for all, with a time of 44.33 seconds.  To put this into perspective, it was the 3rd fastest under 15’s  4x100m time in the UK ever recorded ! (only being beaten by the winners Surrey both in the heat and final).