It was great to be back as the Brighton, Hove and Portslade Schools Cross-Country championships returned to Stanmer Park for the first time in more than a decade.

Dorothy Stringer and Varndean have held the event on the Surrenden Campus in recent years, but building work at both schools made a repeat impossible this year.

Paul Taylor, Shelley Phipps and the staff of Varndean School were still the organisers and the return to Stanmer seemed to attract more athletes than in recent years.

Both the intermediate (year ten-11) and junior (year eight-nine) boys races produced great battles while there were more clearcut winners in both of the girls championships.

The school age groups are slightly different to county groupings so the intermediate race saw Longhill's Daniel Stepney, third in the county under-15s, facing Cardinal Newman's Andrew Donno, who did not make the top ten in the county under-17s.

Varndean's Joe Isherwood, just behind Stepney at county level, and Newman's Alan Ndykuriyo were not going to let Stepney and Donno have things all their own way and the quartet were locked together until well after halfway.

It was only over the final 100m that the fast-improving Donno showed a little more strength and sprinted to victory, five metres ahead of Stepney, with Ndykuriyo taking bronze.

The junior boys race was very much a two-horse race as county under-13 champion Matthew Barrie (Blatchington Mill) and Sam Rigby (Dorothy Stringer) almost immediately moved clear of the field.

Barrie eventually just managed to squeeze out the Stringer runner to take the title, ahead of Patcham's Ashley Witcomb, whose father Peter is the county over-50 veterans champion.

Cardinal Newman's Hannah Curtis, the reigning Sussex Schools year seven champion, was a little under par when she contested the county under-13 championships at Bexhill two weeks ago.

But the athletic-looking youngster eased herself to the head of the field within the first 200m at Stanmer Park and then left her rivals wallowing in her wake.

Sophie Coleman (Brighton and Hove High) took silver ahead of Blatchington Mill's Natalie Hungrecker, who repeated her third place in this group from last year.

Brighton and Hove High's Katie Moore, the reigning Sussex Schools champion who has only recently returned to competition after injury, notched up another title.

She decimated the field in the intermediate girls race, leading from pillar to post and winning by more than 100m from Patcham's Keely Gunn.

It was also good to see her schoolmate Hannah Bates, back in action after more than a year of problems, running well to finish third.

The year seven age group is considered too young to compete at All England Schools level, but they do have their own Sussex Schools championship later in the season.

Brighton and Hove hold all their championships on the same day so we have the chance of seeing the athletes who will be grabbing the limelight in 12 months' time.

Dorothy Stringer's Lewis Hards, whose elder brother Darryl won several Sussex Schools titles a few years back, was a comfortable winner of the year seven boys' race while Varndean's Savannah Echel-Thompson took the girls' title.