Louis Sellers put months of injury woe behind him to lift the senior boys' 400 metres crown at Saturday's Hampshire Schools' Track & Field Championships in Southampton.

Sellers, tipped to be the next international to roll off Hampshire's thriving one-lap production line, has been hampered by a hamstring problem since finishing second in the AAA Indoor Under-20s in Birmingham.

He should have got his outdoor season started as part of the Great Britain junior team in Loughborough last month, but had to pull out because of injury.

Promisingly, however, the 18-year Andover lad, a student at Queen Mary's College in Basingstoke, is moving much more freely now and his impressive 48.3-second victory on Saturday earned him the Bill Bishop Trophy for the afternoon's best sprint performance.

Sellers, an English Schools' intermediate silver medallist two years ago, has his sights set on the Beijing World Youth Games later this year which will require at least a 47-second time to qualify. His outdoor personal best currently stands at 48.12 and he has run 48.02 indoors.

He is hoping to shave another chunk off his best at next weekend's South of England Championships at Crystal Palace, but he faces a race against time to get to south London after sitting morning exams.

Another exciting north Hampshire sprint prospect, Holly Croxford of Andover, set a razor-sharp championship best of 40 seconds dead in the intermediate girls' 300m on Saturday.

She and Aldershot middle-distance runner Emma Pallant have been selected to represent England later this month (June 26) in the International Gymnasia event in Greece.

Croxford, 16, smiled: "It's my first ever international.

"What got me picked was running in the South of England Championships a couple of weeks back at Chelmsford. The conditions were bad, but I knocked a second off my personal best with 38.68 which put me eighth fastest on the all-time under-17 list."

Bradley Awuah-Peasah matched his hot club form for Team Southampton with a 24.1-second victory in the junior boys' 200 metres on Saturday.

The confident 12-year-old was pointed in the direction of club athletics by his Mountbatten School sports teacher Peter Faulkner and is now coached by hurdler Mike Coker.

Awuah-Peasah, from Lordshill, Southampton, has more than one string to his sporting bow. He also attends AFC Bournemouth's School of Excellence, where he is a fleet-footed right-winger/striker.

In the inter boys' sprints, hot favourite Chris Tandi of Portsmouth pulled off an expected 100/200m double.

His 200m time a sizzling 22.1 seconds was faster than that run by Olympic 400m silver medallist Roger Black in 1982.

Amy Matthews, a speedy 15-year-old pupil at Mountbatten School, continued her good form with a 12.9 100m win for the intermediate girls.

The North Baddesley-based youngster also picked up silver in the 200m event behind Aldershot's Emily Thackrah.