Alice wins gold for U11 Girls!

The 18th annual Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire cross country championships were held on Sat 7th Jan at Wollaton Park, Nottingham. High Peak AC sent a good junior team to compete against a strong field of athletes from variety of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire based clubs.  And we didn’t have to wait long for medal success!

In the first event of the day HPAC produced a new Derbyshire champion, with Alice Tolley winning the gold medal in the under 11’s girls competition, coming in first out of 38 Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire girls over the challenging 1.5km course. Alice was in a good position in 2nd place after the main hill and then pulled away in the second half of the race to win by a comfortable margin. Well done Alice!

In the next race of the day we had four boys in the under 11’s boys race over the same 1.5km distance. An excellent performance from George Tweedie in his first cross country event of the season saw him come across the finishing line in11th position of the Derbyshire runners, followed by Samuel McGill in a very strong run coming in just behind in 12th. Xavier Morgan has been recovering from a Christmas bug but still put in his usual high energy effort coming in 16th.  Josh Edlin also in his first cross country event for High Peak gave a gutsy run, coming in 17th.

The under 13 boys race ran over 3km saw Gregor McGill come in 25th, another solid run from our downhill run specialist!  In the under 13 girls, Megan Harris Wood was the first of our girls home in 17th position, with a typically determined performance, with Jamie Lee Taylor and Nell Tolley of HPAC both putting in in solid runs in the same race.

Finally, the under 15 girls saw Sosseh Badjie finishing in 9th place, with this ensuring she would be first reserve for the Derbyshire county squad.  Sosseh’s team mates Charlotte Sweetmore and Sasha Scragg finished close together, both having given their absolute all in completing the tough 4km course.

Once again the HPAC athletes at the Derbyshire Championships showed true effort and team spirit, and most importantly great sportsmanship. It’s been great start to the year for the clubs young athletes. Next up is a return to Nottingham on Saturday for the last of the series of four North Midlands league cross country races, where HPAC hopes to have more successes across the age groups.