Last week was a busy week for our cross country athletes, with two events: the City Schools Championships at Redmayne and the Senior Boys Knole Run.
On Friday 14 January, 19 athletes from the Fourth and Fifth Form raced against runners from six schools across the city at Redmayne, with the aim of qualifying for the County Round. Nine of our runners finished in the top ten of their respective races. Hannah Conway (L4) came second in the U13 girls race with Bea Williamson (L4) and Alena Lai (L4) both also finishing in the top 20. In the U13 boys race, Miles Alston (L4) came fourth and Rufus Snelling (L4) and Ahmed Mohammed (L4) came ninth and twelfth respectively. William Duncan (L4) and Teddy Curtis (L4) completed a strong team, with all five runners finishing in the top 20.
Our U15 girls were all racing up a year, but we also took second place here thanks to a brilliant finish from Minnie Andrews (U4). Amelie Ivie (U4) in fourth and Jessica Bandy (U4) in ninth were closely followed by Amelie Bandy (U4) and Darcey Girling (U4) for a winning team performance. The U15 boys also ran well, with Nick Conway (L5) and Finn Kaiser (U4) finishing fifth and sixth and Thomas Lodge (U4) also running impressively against older athletes.
In the U17 girls race, Bea Wells (M5) led from the start to comprehensively beat the competition, outrunning many of the boys in her age range in the process. Well done to all those who took part; the next round takes place on Wednesday 26 January.
On Saturday, it was the turn of the Senior boys who travelled to Sevenoaks to take part in the notoriously challenging Knole Run. Always a tough race against the top running schools in the south-east, the 9.4km course takes in hills and mud aplenty. In a field of 130 runners, our athletes all ran well, with our fastest finisher, Daniel Conway (U5), coming 30th. William Blythe-Bartram (U6), Luke Fox (U6) and Freddie Power (U6) all made the top 100. The team finished 10th overall – an improvement on the 14th we achieved two years ago – thanks to strong performances from Charlie Windle (L6) and Sebastian Gotto (U6); Seb only being roped into the team the day before! Next Saturday we travel to Gresham’s to defend our domination of the East Anglian League.
