Results & Photos from the English Schools XC Championships
 

These were held on Sat 17th March in Temple Newsam Park, Leeds.

Report from Andy Carter:

Normally this event would signal the end of the Cross Country Season but for 4 athletes there is still a big race to come.
As you know Holly S has been selected to run for England Schools in the World Schools Cross Country in Paris on 4th April,
and after a very exciting English Schools in Leeds on Saturday Will, Holly W and Lucy S will all be running for England Schools in the SIAB International in Nottingham on Saturday.
This is a tremendous achievement by the athletes in what has probably been the best Winter season for the club, in terms of number of athletes doing so well.

Performances on Saturday, in extremely cold and windy conditions with squally snow showers, were immense particularly as for most running this was the third major Championship race in 4 weeks - in our view it does seem a bit silly to have these races within such a short timescale - one would think they could be spread out better - and there is no doubt that the conditions over the past few weeks have been difficult for young athletes.

However there were some brilliant performances on Saturday led by Will's third place in the Junior Boys - he was looking for a top 8 finish, so to finish third was an exceptional performance !
Closely following was the 8th place earned by Lucy in the Inter Girls and Holly in the Junior Girls - both getting that important top 8 finish and an England Vest for the SIAB on Saturday in Nottingham!
Holly S was 9th in the Intermediate Girls, Francesca 12th in the same race ( but running for Shropshire ) - meaning we had 3 girls in the top 12 - an amazing performance !

Vale Royal had 16 athletes racing on Saturday, and almost a third of the Cheshire team.
Everyone performed exceptionally in the conditions and those finishing in the top 100 were Harry 17th in the Senior Boys, Emily 26th in the Senior Girls, Grace 42nd in the Junior Girls , Alex 52nd in the Senior Boys, Patrick 97th in the Junior Boys ( after being pushed over at the start - so to pull back 200 places was quite an achievement ) and Ben finished 100th in the Senior Boys.
It should be noted that half of our runners were in the first year of their age group.

In summary, a learning curve for some but a consolidation of a good season for everyone !
It was also good to see the Cheshire Girls teams take the Aggregate Trophy in their category and finish 7th overall - Boys were 3rd and 9th respectively.
Overall it looks as though Cheshire came 8th top County - not bad !

Click HERE for photos from Rob Brown.
Click HERE for full results.