The children of a few of our members have recently been taking part in a few events which I should have reported on closer to the time so my apologies to the youngsters.
The first event of the Hereford Schools Cross Country was the Leominster district cross country at Lady Hawkins School in Kington back in January.
Wigmore school did particularly well at this event with at least eight of their pupils that I am aware of, running well enough to represent Leominster district at the Hereford and Worcester Cross Country in Bromsgrove later in the month. Scott Jones and Alec Harper qualified in the junior boys and Jasper Robinson in the intermediate boys. Lucy Marriot also got through to this event representing Malvern Hills and Lucy Austin for Hereford.
There was a high quality field in all the races at Bromsgrove on a very cold Saturday morning and the Junior girls were the first to run. Lucy Marriot ran a good race, giving her all in a close run battle at the end, to finish just in front of Martha Jordan- who some may know as a regular at Ludlow Park run, to finish in a very good position of 32 out of 87.
Next up were the 72 junior boys, including Scott and Alec. There was a bit of slipping and sliding at the start and again both gave their all with Scott finishing in 12th place, which qualified him for the nationals in Norfolk. Alec, was a little further down the field in 56. Unfortunately Jasper and Lucy Austin had other commitments and couldn’t make their races.
March 12th saw Scott and Alec taking part in the Hereford AA Cross Country Championships at Hereford racecourse. Unfortunately, despite the attempts of the organisers there was not much support for this event but Scott finished in first place and Alec second and both were very proud of being the two fastest junior boys in the county (they were very quiet about the number of competitors at school on Monday!)
Scott was then part of the H&W team at the English Schools AA Cross Country Championships at the Norfolk Showground the following Saturday. This was a quality field and Scott was competing with boys twelve months older than him. A very crowded field of 345 runners found Scott in the seventh pen but he pushed on and finished in 289 position.
Well done Scott on a fantastic achievement. If he keeps running with the commitment and enjoyment he is showing at the moment he is sure to qualify again next year.
