Saturday 26th January saw the annual staging of the Midlands cross country championships held at Newbold Common in Leamington. The venue provided an extremely challenging course with a variety of hills, ditches and playing fields.
The outstanding team performance came from the U15 boys team who raced to an emphatic victory with Lewis Panter leading the way in 11th place, closely followed by Tom Tyler, 13th, Finbar Myers in 20th and Finlay Ward in 22nd . To show the strength in depth of the whole team, there were 3 others runners, Jack Hope, Aiden O’Brien and Ben Willison who all ran strongly and supported the leading 4 scorers.
Individually, the outstanding performance came from Madeleine Jacks in the U13 girls race. Madeleine was in contention throughout the race, eventually finishing in a truly excellent 3rd place. The team all ran strongly to finish 5th, with many being in the younger year of the age group. Olivia Willison finished in 40th position closely followed by Lara Turner 41st, Jemima Lambert 46th, Isabelle Smith 47th, Zineb Zbirou 57th, Georgia Gercs 62nd, Jessica Kempton 64th Ruby Curtis Free 83rd and Emily Langley 105th.
The U13 boys saw the team win an excellent silver medal. Arthur Tilt produced one of his best ever performance to finish just outside the medals in 4th position. The next R and N athlete was Nathan Lamb in 19th followed by Lewis Robson 41st, Oliver Bell 43rd, Malachy Collins 46th and James Darby 76th.
The U15 girls team ran extremely strongly to finish in 7th position in a very competitive field. Leading runner was Claudia Searle in 24th position, followed closely by Elspeth Unitt 28th, Olivia Williams 44th, Sophia Hill 47th and Abigail Thayanithy 53rd.
The U17 women also ran strongly with leading R and N runner, Lucy Stevens finishing in an excellent 22nd. The following runners were Abigail Pearce 27th, Isabelle Rippon 37th, Emma Barker 38th and Holly Walker in 42nd
The U17 men saw R and N with 3 competitors with Ben Hope producing an outstanding run to finish in 13th position. Ben was followed home by Jake Louis 34th and Cian Hutton 43rd.
In both U20 races R and N had just one competitor with Adrian Kaczmareck finishing in 29th in the male race whilst Rhea Cooper finished in 25th in the ladies
The senior ladies were led home by Sophie Wilkinson Hargate in an outstanding 70th, just ahead of Tilly Lea in 76th. Tamara Harman finished in exactly 100th position with the final scoring place going to Alison Cobb in 127th place. The team was completed by Helen Jones and Minerva Chesser.
Well done to all those that took part!!
Please look on the club’s Facebook page for a selection of photographs
Full results can be found here
