Lund and Meehan lead our teams to clean sweep of team victories at the October Keighley & Craven A. C. Schools’ Cross-Country Challenge
Published on: 19th October 2011
On Wednesday over 500 athletes from 16 schools took part in these races, which saw this year’s cross-country season continue with some tremendous performances as we won 2 individual and three team titles.
We ran at Keighley’s Cliffe Castle on a superb course in great conditions. The weather was turning from our ‘Indian Summer’ but still dry underfoot.
This time our older athletes were first away as our Y9&10s ran with the seniors around the 2 lap course. The athletes were separated out after they finished to give two sets of results.
Yr 9&10 The Y9/10s were missing Tom Blanchard but James Bruce stepped up to lead our challenge beating nearly all the senior runners as he came back 4th overall. We had some strength in depth as Jack Paul, Max Hamer and Eddie Muirhead completed the team and were all in the top 20 finishers. We will have to wait for the official results to see where the team came but they must have come close if they didn’t win. We then had a clutch of runners Ed Chapman, Danny Pethybridge, Marc Doherty, Laurence Edwards and Rob Golson who all in the 20s out of the 50 runners. Max Nicoll and Tom Blake on debut were 32nd and 35th of the 50 or so runners.
Yr 12&13
The Senior in the race were exceptional as George Meehan returned first, closely followed by captain Sam Westcott, Adam Sayedi, Tom Kennedy and Harvey Briggs. They must have won the team competition and were followed by Jack Beetham and a group of our Y11s . James Stephenson, Harry Whyte and Matthew Hattam all made the top 20 overall with Lawrence Wildman, Stephen Bell and George Herbert all running on well.
SDS 29/09/10 Yr 7&8
The year 7&8 team were last to compete with around 50 runners. We had another rugby fixture but this time our runners couldn’t do both. We were therefore without Harvey, Maloney and Lowrie but knew that we would still do very well as there are so many exceptional athletes in these year groups. It just meant that we gave a chance for some of our other athletes to shine. It was no surprise to see James Lund run away from the field but there was a shock when he came back second. It transpired that the leader had taken a short cut and James was indeed the victor.
The team victory was secured by Matthew and Luke Thompson as they came in 2nd and 5th, but with Will Tench running a blinder to finish 6th. Next home was Ben Archer in 8th, but Dougie Smith was fantastic coming 12th just ahead of Ben Speak 14th, Harry Schofield 15th and Danny Pow 18th.
We also
had great performances from most of our runners showing just how good we are at this age group coming well up the list of runners. Tom Everett and Alfie Spain made the top 30 whilst Calum O’Dowd, Archie Paxton, Jack Garside, Alex Blake, Owen Norton and Charlie Smith were in the top 40 of the 50 finishers.
