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Kerrica Hill – Next to sub-13?

Published:Tuesday | March 1, 2022 | 12:08 AMHubert Lawrence/Gleaner Writer
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Members of the Jamaican quartet who clocked a World Under-20 record 42.94 seconds in the women’s 4x100m final on the last day of the World Under-20 Championships in Nairobi, Kenya, last summer. From left are Serena Cole, Tina Clayton, Kerrica Hill and Ti
© Dan Vernon for World Athletics
Members of the Jamaican quartet who clocked a World Under-20 record 42.94 seconds in the women’s 4x100m final on the last day of the World Under-20 Championships in Nairobi, Kenya, last summer. From left are Serena Cole, Tina Clayton, Kerrica Hill and Tia Clayton.
File Bennett
Ricardo Makyn
File Bennett
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Only two girls have broken 13 seconds in the history of the Class Two 100 metres hurdles at the ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys and Girls’ Athletics Championships, but Kerrica Hill of Hydel High School could be next.

Hill was in action at last Saturday’s Gibson McCook Relays, running the third leg as she did when Jamaica won the World Under-20 Championships 4x100 metres gold in Nairobi, Kenya, last year. Hydel set a season-leading Class Two time of 44.63 seconds. A week earlier, she ran a personal record (PR) of 13.25 seconds in the 100m hurdles at the Wint McKenley Classic at Calabar High School.

That’s faster than her 2021 Boys and Girls’ Championships winning time of 13.29, and has given Hydel coach Corey Bennett a sense of optimism. “I think she still has a far way to go with her hurdling technique, which I think will aid her to run much faster, but I think she’s getting a better understanding of the event,” he assessed.

The 13.25 race was ragged. “I just saw somebody charging up into the hurdles too much and having to be braking up a lot. She came to me after the race and said, ‘Sir, I PRed.’ I said, ‘There’s no way you could have PRed with that ugly-looking race,’” Bennett said.

Then he saw the time and said, “If that is 13.2, then I think you are on to something very special.”

Hill’s effort gave the coach flashbacks to the Olympic duel between Hansle Parchment and American Grant Holloway. “I saw a similar thing with the American kid at the Olympics that Parchment beat. I just saw him getting too close to the hurdles too fast, so I think something similar is happening to Kerrica. She’s just getting up under the hurdles too fast, but it’s a work in progress,” he reasoned.

With the 2022 World Under-20 Championships on the horizon, improvements are in the offing. “My hope and my wish is for her to represent Jamaica in the Under-20 over the hurdles,” he said.

Ray-Donna Lee, coached by Bennett at Hydel, and Ackera Nugent are the only Class Two girls to have broken 13 seconds at Champs. Bennett believes Hill can join them. “I think she can because she is a better hurdler than Ray-Donna; taller, definitely faster. I know Ray-Donna was an 11.5 girl, so they’re probably right down in the same ballpark. But I just think, when it matters, Kerrica is just a more dangerous hurdler,” he calculated.

Lee broke the barrier with a record 12.95 seconds in 2018 and Nugent went a step further, to 12.91, in 2019.

“But I don’t discuss numbers with them. I discuss just technique and just how we want to run the race, but she’s getting faster,” Bennett underscored.