Four-midable!
The Club’s Senior Men secured a brilliant fourth Tracksmith Surrey Cross Country League title in five years yesterday (10 February) at the final match of the season, held in the stunning grounds of West Horsley Place, near Guildford, a new and welcoming venue.
For once no hasty mental arithmetic was needed at the finish line to know that the Senior Men's title was in the bag, if not the match, in which the team finished second to Belgrave Harriers – a tantalising two points from the win. No matter, a 287-point advantage over Belgrave in the final reckoning spoke volumes for the hunger within this squad to excel.
Below: the start of the senior men’s race. Photograph Simon Ingall
Twenty different athletes figured in the scoring ten across the four matches of the campaign, but of course a title-win depends on every single member of the squad. Every place counts, as each opposition-team runner pegged back feeds into the overall scoring.
On Saturday, the team was led in by captain, James Stockings, who finished in third, enjoying a spot of friendly 'in house' competition with U23 Henry Silverstein for the third spot in the individual League rankings. With George Mallett forced to spectate following a recurrence of a foot injury midweek, James and Henry were the only runners who could score in every match. James needed to put seven places between him and Henry to leapfrog him in the individual table, but Henry was having none of it, finishing in 9th to secure that third individual place by one point!
Alex Sutton was 10th, with Fred Slemeck in 16th, Ed Mallett in 17th, and Charlie Wyllie in 27th, only two days after finishing second (in 8:32) in the Open 3K in Armagh, one of a programme of races scheduled around the famous 5K International Road Race.
In his first race back after injury, Oli Carrington was the next to score at West Horsley Place, in 36th, with Sam Todd and Ryan McCallister also scoring for the first time in 40th and 41st respectively. Eoin Brady, right behind them in 42nd, closed the team.
Below, warming down with the trophy. Thanks to Jerry Sun for the image.
All in all it was a great weekend for the Club in which all the junior teams finished in either first or second place in their respective tables. The U13 Boys dominated their age category, taking the match win and the title. With four-to-score, Theo Creed came home in first yet again, backed up by James Fraser in fourth, Cyrus Sheikh in 10th and Thomas Hennigan in 14th. Thomas also topped the individual rankings, claiming the individual prize of a bag of goodies from League sponsors Tracksmith (left) having won three of the matches, and finished second in the fourth, over the course of the season.
The U13 Girls finished in second in the match, with Freia Harper-Tee in sixth, Freya McAndie and Beatrice Eminson in 11th and 12th, and Beatriz Pina-Harper in 22nd, which was enough to see them finish joint top of their League, sharing the honours with South London Harriers.
The U17 Women also finished second in their League, as well as in the final match, thanks to Grace Eminson in 7th, Lara Delport (10th), Ariana Shala (13th) and Sophia Anderson (16th). Despite fielding an incomplete team and finishing seventh in the match, Ava McAndie in 13th, Summer McDougall in 15th and Elizabeth Hartsock in 27th secured second place for the U15 Girls in the League. And in the inexplicably combined U15 Boys and U17 Men's League, the team of Alexander McGuigan in 7th, Jack Hobden in 10th, Noah Fernandez in 11th, and Pancho Panchev in 13th finished second in the match and in the League overall.
The Senior Women's race brought the curtain down on the 2023/24 season, a somewhat dubious honour, given theirs was probably the muddiest race of all, thanks to a day's worth of pounding the soggy ground. The steadily growing and developing squad finished seventh A-team, despite missing a few athletes through injury, which was enough to see them in eighth overall in the League, two places above their final standing last season.
Final results, tables and individual rankings