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Heavyweights set for Penn Relays dogfight

Published:Friday | April 27, 2018 | 12:00 AMRaymond Graham/ Gleaner Writer
Gladstone Taylor
Jhevaughn Matherson (right) of Kingston College and friend Tyreke Wilson from Calabar share a laugh during the Class One boys 100m heats at the ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys and Girls Championships in March. Both will feature for their teams in the 4x100m at the Penn Relays today.

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania:

Action is expected to hit high gear among the boys, when the final day of competition at the 124th Penn Relays gets under way on the University of Pennsylvania campus with the likes of Calabar, St Elizabeth Technical (STETHS), Jamaica College, and Kingston College set for a dogfight.

The stage is set for early excitement in the 4x400 metres relay prelims at 8:10 a.m (Jamaica time), ahead of the curtain-closing final later in the day.

Calabar, the defending champions and record holders, will be hoping to advance to their third final of the championship, after doing so in the 4x100m and 4x800m yesterday. The boys from Red Hills Road arrived in Philly hunting history and are confident of winning all three events this weekend.

Former champions Kingston College will be hoping to spoil those plans in the first relay final of the day for high school boys, the Championship of America 4x100m, which is slated for 12:45 p.m.

Led by Jhevaughn Mattherson on the third leg, KC sent a strong message to their rivals, as they led seven Jamaicans into the finals, after clocking 41.24 seconds to win their heat as the fastest qualifiers.

Calabar clocked 41.41 seconds with the quartet of Rosean Young, Christopher Taylor, Tyreke Wilson and De'Jour Russell, looking quite comfortable in qualifying yesterday, as the second fastest team.

The other Jamaican teams in the final are Jamaica College (41.75), Rusea's (41.81), Papine (42.15), STETHS (42.29), and St Jago High (42.31).

After a fantastic 7:48.45 clocking, Jamaica College will start as favourites to take home the 4x800m title in the 3 p.m. final, with STETHS (7:50.25) and Calabar (7:52.06) also securing lanes.