Final Met League: Perivale: Young Athletes
At this stage in the cross country calendar, potentially with races for young athletes every weekend, it was inevitable that some runners with tired legs turned their eyes to next week’s National Championships and elected to give Saturday’s Met League a miss. Not so our U13s where Daniel Rowden had a fine win in the U13B race and the U13G team had their eyes set on the league trophy. The girls were not to be disappointed and with a fine team performance duly ran out winners on the day and went home proudly clutching the championship shield.
As usual, the concluding league fixture was at Perivale and this year the course was somewhat drier than in recent years - although in Perivale’s case, it is all relative; most runners’ footwear was soaked through before the end of the first field.
With five Woodford U13 girls (a quarter of the total field) toeing the line, the odds favoured our team to overturn the two point deficit on Enfield; as it turned out, we were the only club to field a scoring four. They packed closely with Alicia McArdell again running well but narrowly edged out of 2nd place by a single second by one of Enfield’s two runners. Isabel Levine made her Met League debut and had a superb run for 4th place, 18 seconds down on Alicia. Enfield’s second runner was next in for 5th but with Jodie Ratcliff in 6th and Rosie Poole closing the team in 10th, our score of 23 was unbeatable. Niamh Bartlett was our fifth runner home in 20th.
In the U13B race, Daniel Rowden was our sole representative (Canaan Solomon unable to make the trip and Harry Cavell feeling ill before the start). Daniel led more or less from the gun and was established at the head of proceedings by the time that the race passed though the gap in the hedge at the boundary of the start field. By the time he returned to the finish he had a comfortable lead of 30 metres or so, taking the victory by 7 seconds and later attracting the interest of roving journalist Alistair Aitken.
We also had a full team in the U15/17W race and here, Lauren MacGregor was second home, six seconds behind Shaftesbury’s Georgia Bell. Lauren was always in the lead group and any uncertainty as to how she would cope after recent injury dissipated by the time she was in the finish funnel. Isobel Moss justifiably felt content with a solid 11th place; Lauren Freeman (19th) was again involved in a scrap for placings as a group of eight runners crossed the line in seven seconds. Stephanie Smith (sporting socks that would prevent her getting lost on a dark and foggy night) closed the team in 22nd with Billie Bradley was not far behind in 25th.
Absences from the Woodford ranks were also apparent in the U15/17M race, with James Stockings, Liam Blaikie, Chris Sear and Perry Rowan all resting for the Nationals and Elliot Joseph’s broken ankle keeping him away too. Ryan Dunne however, did make the trip and profited with an excellent 6th place.
Overall, the possibility of our doing a clean sweep of the league trophies evaporated with the fixture conflict between Essex Schools and the Alexandra Palace fixture and the understandable absences at Perivale just confirmed there was no chance of making up the deficits. However, we have had more runners turn out this year than in recent years and we have shown signs of being more competitive, a point highlighted by our second placing in the Howard Williams Trophy for the aggregate junior team scores. The promise shown by the U13 Girls team bodes well for the future and their justifiable joy at the presentations was heartwarming to see.