Green, Rodgers top GC Foster 5K

HYDEL High’s Monifa Green and Kingston College’s Ari Rodgers continued their fine form on the road this season as both won their respective sections of the Gerald Claude Foster 5K Run/Walk in Angels, Spanish Town, yesterday.

Green, winner of the recent Portmore Burger King 10K, captured the female event in 19 minutes 10.30 seconds, while Rodgers covered the course in a fast 15 minutes 31.50 seconds.

Hydel swept the top-three spots among the females as 13year-old Oceelia Jones was second in 19:30.90 with third going to Aaliyah Stewart in 19:44.30.

Rodgers, 15, had his second success in a week following his win at the Hugo Chambers 5K event the previous Sunday. Despite running in mid pack for the first 1,000 metres, Rodgers showed his class from the 2K mark as he joined the front runners, led by G.C. Foster College’s Oshane Archibald, Obrien Frith and his teammate Shane Buchanan.

Rodgers then pulled away from his rivals late in the race for a convincing win. Buchanan was second in 15:37.60, with Frith passing Archibald near to the finish line for third in 15:58.40.

“I am happy with my second win and I enjoyed the route as it was a flat one and I had no problem with it,” Rodgers said.

G.C. Foster and Hydel walked away with the team awards for males and female,s respectively. Kingston College were second and Bellefield took third among the males. In the female team event, Holmwood Technical placed second and Edwin Allen High, third.

Meet director Maurice Wilson was pleased with the organisation of the event.

“We started on time and I would like to thank all the officials who turned up to ensure that everything went well. Big up to our sponsors, and we had more athletes than we anticipated and this is good sign for the future as I expect next year’s staging to be bigger and better,” Wilson, a senior lecturer at the institution, said.