The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

THEY painted the Thomas A Robinson Track and Field Stadium green and white on Friday as the Queen's College Comets rushed onto the field to celebrate their victory as St Augustine's College's long stranglehold on the Bahamas Association of Independent Secondary Schools' Track and Field Championships was finally broken after 26 years.

After leading from the first day, the Comets put the finishing touches on a superb performance at the end of the three-day meet to win their first title - and they did it in grand style, accumulating a total of 1,408.59 points to dethrone the Big Red Machine by 150.50 points.

"I'm happy. The kids came out the first day and they showed a lot of heart. That is what we started with and in our meetings, we told them that they have to want it if they want to beat SAC," said Queen's College coach Everette Fraser. "I think they got the message and they went out and got the job done."

It was a remarkable turn around for SAC, who had posted a 155 point victory last year, as they had to settle for second place this time with 1,258 points in what turned out to be a two-horse race at the head of the 12-team field. But there wasn't much change in the rest of the standings as the St Anne's Bluewaves held onto third place with 477 points.

What may have been a big difference was the fact that there were more Queen's College fans in the stands than for St Augustine's. However, coach William 'Knucklehead' Johnson said that was just half of their problem: the other half was the Comets out-performed his athletes on the field.

"It was three hard days. We knew coming in here it was going to be a battle," he stressed. "They had many surprises for us. Usually you know your competition, but they just had a lot of surprises and their kids just competed very well. They really wanted it and they went after it.

"I believe that after 26 years you get kind of relaxed, but we are going back to analyse the results and see where we go from here. But hats off to Queen's College. They performed very well and they deserve to be the champions this year. We just have to regroup and come back next year."

Not even winning the first and the last of the traditional meet-ending 4 x 400m relays in the junior girls and senior boys helped the Big Red Machine to put a dent in the Comets' lead. Queen's College went on to capture the junior boys, intermediate girls, intermediate boys and senior girls as they demonstrated their dominance this year.

On Friday, there were several Carifta standards attained: Comets' Branson Rolle in the intermediate boys 400m hurdles (55.57sec) and the high jump (1.90m) along with teammate Christopher Johnson (1.90m) and Aquinas College Aces' Tahj Moss (1.88m); SAC's Drashanae Rolle in the senior girls 400m hurdles in 1min 01.87sec; SAC's Doniesha Anderson (1.70m) and Comets' Daejha Moss (1.65m) in the intermediate girls high jump; SAC's Serena Brown (42.11m) and Laquel Harris (39.34m) in the senior girls discus and St John's College Giants' LaQuan Nairn (15.58m) in the senior boys triple jump.

And records were set by SAC's intermediate girls 4 x 100m relay in 47.99sec, erasing the previous mark of 48.31 they clocked in the heats on Thursday, while Queen's College in the intermediate girls 4 x 400m relay in 3min 57.82sec to replace their own mark of 3min 59.07sec from 2012.

SAC's Xavier Coakley ran 53.04sec to better the 53.18sec that St Andrew's Nejmi Burnside set in 2010 in the senior boys 400m hurdles; Anderson's Carifta qualifer in the intermediate girls high jump surpassed the old mark of 1.67m thqat was held by Daejhya Moss from last year; SAC's Denzel Pratt threw the discus 44.20m to eclispe Donte Johnson's old mark of 44.07m and Nairn's 15.58m in the triple jump was better than the 15.26m that Kaiwan Culmer did in 2014.

Final standings

1 Queen's College 1,408.50 points

2 St Augustine's College 1,258

3 St Anne's 477

4.St John's College 401

5 Nassau Christian Academy 295.50

6 St Andrew's School 238.50

7 Jordan Prince William 168.50

8 Kingsway Academy 160

9 Temple Christian Academy 148

10 Aquinas College 64

11 Bahamas Academy 26

12 Charles W Saunders 21

• For complete results of the three-day meet, report and photographs see Monday's Sports section of The Tribune.