Benedictine athletes continued their good form this season coming up with a brilliant performance once again at the Senior Sir John Tarbat Schools Athletics Championship held at the Diyagama Stadium from 8-11 September.
Despite missing a few athletes due to injury and illness, the Benedictines emerged very close overall runners up to the eventual winners, Maris Stella College, Thimbirigaskatuwa.
Lyceum International School was placed third, St. Joseph Vaz College, Wennappuwa fourth and Maris Stella College, Negombo coming in fifth place.
The Benedictines were also crowned Under-20 champions, track events champions, relay champions and Under-18 runners up.
The top performer among the Benedictines was Sri Lanka junior athlete Sasindu Jayasinghe, who set up a new meet record in the Under-18 – triple jump, with a leap of 15.41m.
Sasindu is the son of Sanjaya Jayasinghe, who was a household name in Sri Lanka’s triple jump arena for nearly two decades.
The brilliant Under-20 athlete Andrew Akash won the 110m hurdles with a time of 14.31 seconds and ran impressively in the 4 x 100m relays.
Among others, the Jayamanne twins Kalana and Kavindu (Under-20), Y. Thulastigan (Under-16 – silver in putt shot and bronze in discus throw), Umal Perera (Under-16 – fourth in 200m and silver in 4 x 400m relay) and Senesh Gamage (Under-18 – bronze in triple jump and long jump and Silver in 4 x 100m and 4 x 400m relays) stood out.
Credit should also go to other members of the relay teams in all three age segments, which helped the team to become relay champions.
The Benedictine coaching and support staff is led by mercurial Nuwan Abeywickrema, who returned to the country the day before the meet started, after participating as the only Sri Lanka coach in the Kids’ Athletics ‘Train the Trainer’ course organised by World Athletics in Thailand.
The excellent leadership, commitment and hard work of the coaching and support staff have resulted in the consistent performances of the Benedictines this year.
They had previously won the Colombo North, Colombo Zonal, Western Province and the All Island Ritzbury Schools Relay Championship.