Sports round up
The last two weeks have seen the Academy athletics teams successfully participate in 3 competitions. The year 9 Croydon schools event was the first and both the girls and boys teams were looking to build on the promising performances from last year. The final results saw both boys and girls team finish in 4th place with notable performances coming from Saskia Navaratnam (1st Discus), Matthew George (4th 200m) and Stephan Lock (4th Triple jump).
A week later, Croydon Arena hosted the year 8 Croydon Schools championships. This event produced the best ever performance by an Academy athletics team with the boys narrowly finishing second by 1.5 points to a very strong Whitgift team. Notable performances from this event came from Leo Rigby (1st Javelin), Riccardo King (2nd 200m), Mityrae Brooks (2nd High Jump), Robert Sakala (3rd Hurdles) and the 4x100m relay team consisting of Bart Lugone, Stefan Bridge-Nelson, Nathan Obayori and Ricardo King who claimed first place after holding of a strong challenge from Whitgift.
On the 19th May a squad of Harris students from years 7 - 10 travelled to Croydon Arena to compete in the prestigious English Schools Track & Field Cup competition.
The event was attended by many schools across South London and students faced some tough competition, especially from the Private schools.
The competition was a new experience for our Harris athletes as each athlete had to compete in two events, one track event and one field event, scoring points not for the finishing position but for the time or distance achieved. This resulted in a fiercely fought competition from all. The Harris Teams represented themselves and the academy extremely well and all should be very proud of their achievements.
The overall results were as follows; the junior boys’ team (year 7 & 8) were placed 3rd overall, with 393points, only 30points behind the winning team from Woolwich Polytechnic school. The Intermediate boys (year 9&10) came 5th, and both the Junior Girls and Intermediate girls squads were 6th. These are fantastic results from all teams, and we are awaiting confirmation as to whether the teams will make it through to the next round where they will represent London Schools in the South East England final.
A special mention should go to Nathan Carty in the Intermediate Boys discus scoring a tremendous 34 points for this single event. Mityrae Brooks displayed excellent performance in both the hurdles and high jump, scoring 43points for his team. Vanessa Watkins scored 24points for her 200m and Discus events combined and Saskia Navaratnam scored 27 points for the intermediate girls team in the Discus and Hurdles.
Dan Buss
Deputy Head of PE
