County CC Champs: Young Athletes

There was plenty to celebrate for Woodford’s young athletes at Saturday’s Essex Championships, held at Basildon’s Gloucester Park. The medal haul was two individual golds (for Canaan Solomon and Lauren MacGregor) and one silver (James Stockings), three team medals (one of each hue) and six of our runners gaining automatic selection to run for Essex at the Inter-Counties Championships.

The conditions in Gloucester Park were the most favourable encountered for several years, mostly a soft but unbroken surface with little real mud – even the feared hill seemed to have lost some of its reputation with several athletes announcing afterwards that it was ‘fine’.

Overall, this was a pleasing performance from our athletes given our small contingent and the stiff competition from the Essex clubs, particularly Chelmsford and Basildon; all our athletes crossed the line having done their utmost.

The U13 Boys’ race was the first event of the day and Canaan Solomon moved quickly to the head of the field to take a lead which he steadily stretched out to a comfortable 25 second advantage by the finish taking gold in 14m03” with Basildon’s Max Jones 25 seconds back in second place. Our team finished 4^th with the other scorers being James Wakefield (25^th in 17m42”), Harry Cavell (26^th in 17m56”) and Taylor Reece (38^th in 20m20”).

The U13 Girls’ race followed with Chelmsford’s Khy Mhlanga winning in 14m00”. Our first two home were 6^th placed Rosie Poole (14m48”) and 7^th placed Jodi Ratcliff (15m09”). Rosie, perhaps harbouring hopes of a higher finish was disappointed but nevertheless ran hard and the experience will be invaluable in the forthcoming championships; both she and Jodi retain a chance of selection for the Inter-Counties. Edie Preece (15^th in 15m54”) and Katy Petyt (23^rd in 16m37”), both in their first championships, closed the team with Edie fighting off a stitch and Katy trying (and succeeding) not to be sick whilst negotiating the home straight. The team score of 51 was good enough for the bronze medal but backing the team up were Aiofe Guyatt (32^nd) and Katherine Myers (47^th) both of whom gave a good account of themselves.

The U15 Girls’ team went one better than the U13s and secured the team silver medal, just 3 points behind Chelmsford’s score of 41. Thurrock’s Gemma Holloway had a fairly convincing win, taking the gold in a time of 16m51”. Amelia Barrett finished just outside the individual medals with 4^th place (17m30”) but for a time was hanging onto 3^rd until slipping a place on the hill and ending up just 4 seconds behind the bronze medal winner (Basildon’s Lydia Hallam). Jessica Burgess (18m27”) and Alicia McArdell (18m41”) took 10^th and 11^th with Isabel Levine (19m38”) closing the team in 19^th place; this was an excellent result in the largest young athlete race of the day with 52 finishers.

For our other male athletes, we could only muster a single athlete in each of the subsequent races; James Stockings taking the silver in the U17M race, 27 seconds behind Hoseah Gikungu’s winning time of 16m 19”. Perry Rowan was our sole representative in the U15B race and claimed Inter-County selection with his 5^th place whilst Liam Blaikie will hope for subsequent selection with his 8^th place in a race distinctive for having no complete scoring teams in the field of 20 finishers.

Our U20 Women’s team however dominated their race which was run together with the U17 Women. The first four runners home were U17s with Jessica Judd taking the gold in 17 minutes dead and her Chelmsford teammates the silver and bronze. Lauren MacGregor took the U20W gold in 20 minutes dead with a 3 second advantage over Havering’s Gemma Phillips. Becky Hewitt was 5^th (21m00”), Sidnie Sales 7^th (21m27”) and Kate Stockings 11^th (23m19”) with our team taking the gold medal for a score of 24. U17W Ellie Foster made a welcome return to racing finishing 20^th in 22m40” but also mixing it well with the U20W runners.

(These will be presented at the forthcoming Young Athletes’ Awards Evening – date tba)