ATHLETICS: Kennedy powers to a sprint double (From Wiltshire Times)

ATHLETICS: Kennedy powers to a sprint double

3:30pm Saturday 23rd June 2012 in Sport News

WILL Kennedy lowered the 100m record for junior boys in blustery conditions at the Wiltshire Schools Athletics Championships at Salisbury last Saturday.

The 14-year-old from Westbury clocked 11.3 seconds to take half a second off the record of former Devizes School student and recent Olympic torch bearer Joe Hutchinson, from Bowerhill near Melksham.

Matravers School student Kennedy also equalled the 200m record of 23.3.

The 100m time put Kennedy back to number two in the country for U15 boys and, in a fine season to date, he also sits at number three in the 200m rankings.

The Team Bath athlete, who defended his U15 boys 100m, 200m, long jump and 4x100m relay titles at the Wiltshire Championships last month, goes to the South West Championships in Exeter tomorrow as the defending 100m champion.

Kennedy hopes to record a sprint double, having finished second in the 200m last year.

Elsewhere at the Wiltshire Schools Championships, Calne’s Morgan Gascoigne shattered a 46-year-old long jump record at Salisbury.

The 17-year-old retained her senior women’s long and triple jump titles – also bettering the county mark in the latter set in 2001.

In blustery conditions, she leapt a massive personal best of 11.64m in the triple jump, beating the previous 11.03m mark of Swindon’s Katherine Silto.

Gascoigne took long jump gold with 5.56m – a centimetre further than Trowbridge’s Pat Copland’s mark from 1966.

Both distances exceeded the Entry Standard for the English Schools Championships in Gateshead later this year and earned the teenager a berth on the Wiltshire squad for the South West Schools Championships in Exeter on Saturday.

Devizes’ Sophie Hay achieved an English entry standard 12.1 in the intermediate girls’ 80m hurdles, as West Lavington’s Clare Dyer and fellow Dauntsey’s School student Nikko Hunt did likewise in the intermediate girls’ and junior boys’ pole vault with 3.30 and 3.55, respectively.

Senior girl Katherine Turner, from St Laurence Schiool in Bradford on Avon, achieved a national level time in the 1500m with 4: 35.9.