Despite missing a few athletes due to injury and illness, the Benedictines emerged a very close overall Runners up to the eventual winners, Maris Stella College, Thimbirigaskatuwa. Lyceum International School was placed third, St Joseph Vaz College, Wannappuwa fourth and Maris Stella College, Negombo coming in fifth place.
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 15.41 meters.
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 110 meters Hurdles with a time of 14.31 seconds and ran impressively in the 4 x 100 meter 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 – 4th in 200 meters and Silver in 4 x 400 m relay) Senesh Gamage (Under 18 – Bronze in Triple Jump & Long Jump and Silver in 4 x 100 m and 4 x 400 m relays stood out Credit should also go to others members of the Relay Teams in all three age segments, which helped the team to become Relay Champions.
The Benedictine Coaching & 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 TRAINERS’ Course organized by World Athletics in Thailand.
The excellent leadership, commitment and the hard work of the Coaching & Support Staff, has resulted in the consistent performances of the Benedictines this year.
They earlier won the Colombo North- , Colombo Zonal-, Western Province- and the All Island Ritzbury Schools Relay Championship.