Bishop Luffa students bring home medals from the English Schools Athletics Championships in Birmingham

Molly Smithers (12King) and Ben Stewart (11Andrewes) brought home Bishop Luffa’s second and third medal in the school's history, following on from discus thrower Mr Cooke when he was competing in the junior boy’ age group.  The two medals gained at Birmingham were only the 5th and 6th Chichester Athletics Club have ever won and three of them have roots at Bishop Luffa. 

Representing the Sussex senior girls, Molly Smithers capped a fine year with a well deserved bronze medal in the 3000m, a challenging distance in the heatwave.

Running with the leading pack, Molly decided not to follow a break by the leading two but consolidated her 3rd place to win bronze in a time of 9min 49.8sec, just three seconds behind silver at the finish but well in front of the 4th placed athlete.

Following her victory in the South of England Cross Country Championship in January, this represented a superb all round season.

Bishop Luffa’s second medallist came in the Intermediate boys’ 1500m steeplechase, where Ben Stewart set a personal best of 4min 20sec in the final, having won his heat the day before. 

It took a new championship record of 4min 11sec to get the better of Ben, whose bronze medal was the second for Bishop Luffa, one of the very few schools in the UK to gain more than one medal.

The third of the trio of Bishop Luffa athletes in action was 1500m runner Elodie Hill (11King), who made it through a very strong heat to finish a creditable 10th in the final with a new PB of 4.39.5.

Congratulations to Molly, Ben and Elodie and we look forward to seeing them compete in the cross country season. 

Tim Godfray, Team Leader of PE