I’ve scoured the TBH archives and managed to find this extract from the very first junior coaches meeting on 20-11-12, as this sums up exactly what we were working towards today.
“The Sherman Cup / Davison Shield require the winning club to enter athletes at every age category and is designed to highlight well balanced, thriving clubs, with strong junior, senior and veteran sections. Success at this competition would demonstrate we are heading in that direction.”
As I mentioned to quite a few of the less keen participants, this was the first time we have ever had enough juniors in each age category for us to actually compete in this Harrier League event, but only for the ladies Davison Shield. We will have to wait another year for the men to have enough U17 junior men to be able to close teams in all categories. Sorry lads but I’m going to focus on the ladies first in this race report, although there were some outstanding results from the lads.
After weeks of persuasion, emotional blackmailing, and me crying until people just said yes, we got to race day with firm commitments from at least 3 in every female age category. First up were our brave U17 contingent, several coming out of retirement just for the occasion. It was a bit touch and go in our household as Jake had Covid the previous Friday, just getting out of Covid Jail on Friday morning with his second negative test, then Emma catching it earlier on in the week. Hope & I managed to avoid it in the household, testing negative every day so that our U17 team was still complete. This was the category that very often makes or breaks a clubs efforts, and with only 3 clubs having complete teams in this one, it greatly reduced the competition, making it a 3 horse race from then on in. Thanks so much to both Anna Dorman and Hope Moir for agreeing to run, and of course to our regular U17 XC star Sana Arif for getting us to this point in the competition.
Next up were the U15’s and we had 5 in that event. Well done to Ruby Colver (and Happy Birthday) Sophie Younger and Caitlin Attley for making the team up and also Adeline Bourgenot-Lewis and Laura Whitman for backing them up, as this was a crucial role today, which put my mind at rest to some extent.
Finally, the last junior counting team comprised of Naimah Michla, Melina Bourgenot-Lewis and Kora Howorth with them being backed up by Anna Carr and Ruby Ditchburn. There are free NEHL Start Fitness T-shirts for everyone who has completed 4 harrier leagues, Sherman Cup / Davison Shield and both the NE and Northern XC Champs, and Ruby is one of the few people who may well be eligible for one of those, just to show how committed she has been to XC this year.
I should also mention Eliza Palmer in the U11 race, who’s mum had to sprint to the number collection point to get a replacement number, literally minutes before the start of the race, with Eliza giving good account of herself finishing 18th in a time of 4:54
All we then needed, were strong performances from the senior and the veteran ladies’ teams. I think emotional blackmail was my best tool on this front and telling the ladies that “the juniors were relying on them and would be upset if they couldn’t close senior and veteran ladies teams”, seemed to do the trick.
For the ladies, Alison Dargie was 5th overall and was second veteran lady, taking the silver medal. Katy Stevenson was our next veteran in in 13th place overall with Rachel Turnbull completing the veteran’s team in 55th place.
The senior ladies were led by Hannah Stewart in 40th place, Amy Hume in 75th place and Claire Norman in 93rd. We had plenty of ladies backing the team up, so there was no way we wouldn’t have closed either a veteran or senior team. Thanks to the concerted effort from the ladies we won the competition overall, a fact that was yelled at me at various places around the course as I was running my race. It was worth the effort, and the juniors were all over the moon to win this shield, so thanks to everyone who ran for the club today.
OK so on to the lads races. We started off with the U11 boys and with some great packing, they would have closed a good strong team if there was a team competition for this category. Sam Snell was in 31st place in a time of 5:09, Aalim Arif in 36th and Aidan Whitfield in 37th both registering 5:14
Zak Kettle was our only U17 junior man and he gave good account of himself coming 15th in a time of 20:18 for the 5.4k course. David Carr was first TBH in for the U15 boys race coming 14th in a time of 12:16 followed by Harry Snaith in 39th place in a time of 14:54.
The last junior race was the U13 boys and after his recent selection to run for the County (a real honour and the first TBH junior to do so) Freddie Palmer felt the need to justify his selection so went off really hard and just kept going. Freddie won the gold medal for his efforts, a well-deserved victory that he worked hard for. Freddie was backed up by Lucas Powell in 27th place and Joel Tanser in 41st place, bringing their team home in 5th place. With the Senior men finishing 4th and the veteran men finishing 2nd this really bodes well for next year, when we will have enough boys in each age category to close full teams.
Sorry very brief sandwich report with the only entry being tuna mayo on brown bread from the Kettle’s gives them the win. We were treated to Nina’s vegan cinnamon buns again, which are probably one of my favourite food groups right now.
Dave Moir
(Thanks to Stuart Whitman and Kirsten Howorth for the photos)
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