[dropcap]S[/dropcap]aint Lucia and the Caribbean’s leading high jumper, Levern Donaline Spencer, will be the presumptive favorite to win a record 15th title as Saint Lucia’s Sportswoman of the Year in 2018. Spencer has been confirmed by the St Lucia Athletics Association as Senior Female Athlete of the Year for 2018. The 34-year-old from Babonneau had one of the best years in a sterling career in 2018. She captured Saint Lucia’s first-ever gold medal at the Commonwealth Games, when she cleared 1.95m in Gold Coast, Australia last April. She followed that up by repeating as Central American and Caribbean Games champion in Barranquilla, Colombia, and North and Central American and Caribbean (NACAC) champion in Toronto, Canada.
Those latter two titles, each of which she had won three times in a row, came within a week of one another. To cap off her season, Spencer took bronze at the IAAF Continental Cup in Ostrava, the Czech Republic in September. For the season, she cleared 1.90m or better 12 times, and attained her second-best height all-time, 1.96m, which also ranked as the eighth-best height outdoors for 2018.
Meanwhile, Commonwealth Youth Games champion and Youth Olympics silver medalist in the women’s 100m, Julien Alfred, has been named Junior Female Athlete of the Year. The 17-year-old took bronze for her high school, St Catherine’s, at the ISSA Boys and Girls Champs in March. She made the finals of the Flow CARIFTA Games in Nassau, the Bahamas, also in March, but then capped her year with a blazing fast run at the Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Alfred will be starting school at the University of Texas in January 2019.
Albert Reynolds is Saint Lucia’s Senior Male Athlete of the Year for 2018. The national record holder for the men’s javelin throw, he made the Commonwealth Games finals in April, and then won the French National Championships in July. Sprints specialist Shelton St Rose is Junior Male Athlete of the Year for 2018. St Rose competed for Saint Lucia at the Flow CARIFTA Games, was fourth in the Hampton Games in Trinidad and Tobago, won the Windward Islands School Games gold medal, and then finished fifth overall, a fine performance in the men’s 100m at the Youth Olympics.
