Saturday 3rd November saw Rugby and Northampton AC take part in the annual England Cross Country Relay Championships and the event saw the best ever set of results for the team.
The U13 girls fielded two teams of three athletes in the event and the R and N girls of Lara Turner, Jessica Kempton, Olivia Willison, Emily Langley, Georgia Gercs and Jemma Lambert all performed extremely well at this national level, with the two teams finishing 35tha and 43rd with Lara recording the fastest time of the R and N athletes. The U13 boys fielded three teams and all ran well with the A team finishing in an outstanding 29th position with Arthur Tilt recording the fastest time of the R and N athletes. The other competitors for R and N were Joseph Jones, Lewis Robson, Nick Marsh, B Westmoreland, Nutt, Joseph Darby, James Darby and Louis Starr.
The races came thick and fast with R and N fielding two teams in the U15 girl’s competition. The teams of Elspeth Unit, Olivia Williams, Alice Bates, Sophia Hill, A Thayanithy and I Haynes finished in 33rd and 86th position – the stand out performance coming from Alice with an outstanding time of 7 mins 27.
The U15 boys A team turned in a stellar team performance to finish in 12th position – the highest ever position for R and N. The team was led off by Noah Bennett who brought the team back in 12th position. Finbar Myers and then Tom Tyler held this position against the elite of English running – a performance they can truly be proud of! R and N also had B and C teams and the B team again underlined the strength in depth in the age group, finishing in 32nd position – the team consisted of Louis Buttrick, Aiden O’Brien and Lewis Panter. R and N also boasted a C team of Dominic Jones, J Cooper and O Cherrington.
R and N fielded two teams in the U17 women’s race and all six competitors, Lucy Stevens, Abigail Pearce, Molly Williams, Holly Walker, Olivia Reeves and Isabelle Rippon ran excellently against this high level of competition.
The U20 men were led off by English Schools 1500m champion, Josh Lay, currently studying at Loughborough University. Josh brought the team back in an outstanding 5th position, a mere 12 seconds behind the leading team. Then came another outstanding performance from MussAb Hassan who pulled the team into bronze medal position. Abedom Beyenne wasn’t quite able to hold this position but ran strongly to bring the home in 12th position – less than 40 seconds behind the medal position.
The best result came from the U17 men, however. The A team was led off by Fergus Scott who brought the R and N team back in 6th position. Joe Vaughan and then Adam Caulfield ran extremely strongly and eventually finished in 9 th position – the best ever placing by a R and N male team at this National level! The B team of Matthew Blomley, Cian Hutton and Matthew Everett finished in 65th position to round off an outstanding day for the team!!
All results can be found here:
