Juniors at South of England Championships
Posted by on 31 January 2017
Stragglers fielded a record number of juniors in the 2017 South of England Cross-Country Championships with 12 competing across 5 age-categories. The event took place at Parliament Hill with the weather perfect, the organisation as faultless as ever, and racing exciting throughout.
Clubs typically only bring their strongest juniors to this event (particularly those with a significant distance to travel), meaning that the races are of a very high quality throughout the field. This can mean that it’s a daunting challenge for first-timers, but I’m very happy to report that all our young athletes rose to the occasion producing exceptionally good performances.
It was particularly pleasing that we were able to complete teams in the U13 and U15 girls categories recording 31st and 25th place finishes respectively. This placed Stragglers up amongst clubs who have much larger junior sections and strong traditions in the event.
The highest place finisher from our group was Spencer Bateman with an excellent 43rd place in the very competitive U13 boys and he’s now amongst the quickest boys in Surrey. In this race last year Spencer finished outside the top 200, and this progress is just reward for the dedication and hard work that he has put in throughout the winter. Ollie Emment was close to the top 100 this year, but he is young for this category and remains in it for 2018 when he’ll be looking to also contest a high placed finish.
Sibling harmony was maintained in the Jensen household with sisters Maisie and Poppy each finishing 128th place in their respective U13 and U15 categories, and both girls performed an excellent role on the day leading home the Stragglers in these races.
Ben Dibley and Kieran Desmond were the lone representatives in the U15 & U17 boys categories. These couple of races are always extremely fast and furious characterised by robust tactics in the hurly-burly of the midfield pack, but both are accomplished athletes and ran very mature races to record excellent placings well inside the top-100.
Full Results HERE.
|
U13G |
3k 283 Finishers 31st Team |
|
|---|---|---|
|
128th |
Maisie Jensen |
13:53 |
|
227th |
Madeleine McGuigan |
15:13 |
|
232nd |
Amber Bryan |
15:17 |
|
254th |
Lucy Hoseason |
15:51 |
|
U13B |
3k 311 Finishers |
|
|
43rd |
Spencer Bateman |
11:55 |
|
115th |
Ollie Emment |
12:32 |
|
U15G |
4k 270 Finishers 25th Team |
|
|
128th |
Poppy Jensen |
19:26 |
|
169th |
Phoebe Fennell |
19:57 |
|
181st |
Fenella Challinor |
20:12 |
|
252nd |
Tallulah Penney |
23:09 |
|
U15B |
4.5k 291 Finishers |
|
|
84th |
Ben Dibley |
16:27 |
|
U17B |
6k 183 Finishers |
|
|
80th |
Kieran Desmond |
21:52 |
