WADAC juniors in action in Hampshire XC League opener

This season’s Hampshire Cross Country League opening fixture at Wellesley Woodlands, Aldershot, was taking place a month later than the traditional curtain-raiser, but nevertheless got the campaign going beneath beautiful blue skies and in temperatures in the mid-teens. As usual, a strong contingent of WADAC juniors turned out for the event.
nFirst off, and producing Winchester’s best team results of the day, were the U11s, where, using the usual methodology of three runners to score for each team, Winchester were top of the pile in both girls’ and boy’s races. This maintained a recent tradition of WADAC dominance in this age group, not only in terms of team results, but perhaps more importantly, in terms of participation. It was gratifying to see 15 girls and 25 boys sporting the black and gold, many of them of course competing for the first time. In both races this represented almost exactly one third of the whole field, and was testament to the enthusiastic recruitment policy of Team Manager Paul Cox, being a considerable uplift on the numbers of U11s running for the club a year ago. We hope to see them all out again at Bournemouth in three weeks’ time.
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nThere was a big welcome from the athletes to those who have just joined the club including Aoife U, Millie H, Natalia S and Partycja S. It was really great to have you all as part of the girls' team and for the new boys who joined the boys' team as well.
n The full U11 results are available on the home club’s website : www.afd.org.uk/afd-home-match-results/ A special mention here, however, for the first three home in each WADAC team, being Aoife Uniacke (4th), Millie Honan (8th) and Francesca Bertacchini (9th) for the girls and Eddie Clegg (2nd), Leo Davies-Pratt (9th) and Ollie Furby (11th) for the boys.
nWinchester’s U13 girls also had good numbers competing, though no team podium finish on this occasion. Elodie Gill (28th), Amber Price (33rd) and Ellie Jepson (37th) made the scoring team , backed up by Sophie Jacobs (46th), Gwyneth Hunter (48th), Evie Smith (50th) and Amy Drabble (52nd), everyone competing well.
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nWADAC’s Under 13 boys have been in excellent early season form, alas a little too good from the club’s perspective. Westgate School’s junior boys team, comprised entirely of WADAC runners, recently reached the semi-finals of the English Schools Cross Country Cup, a fixture which clashed with Saturday’s races at Aldershot. Worse still, they travelled to Kent and promptly qualified for the finals, so will miss the next Hampshire League fixture as well. I suppose we should say Well Done to Ollie Foden, Luke Furby, Tom Savill and George Oldroyd ! In their absence and that of two other team-mates, it was left to Sam Parker to fly the flag for Winchester on Saturday, finishing well in 19th, followed by a whole host of younger year runners, Felix Sclater (27th), Cooper Cripps (30th), Ed Duxbury (35th), Samuel Richardson (39th), Tom Pate (40th), Daniel Instone (42nd), Tom Price (43rd) and William Griffiths (45th), again a fabulous turnout given the six boys that were missing.
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nThe U15 girls trio of Poppy Taylor (5th, even though the results say 6th), Kate Atkinson (7th) and Grace Baker (8th) belied their lower year status to produce the best team result of the day outside the U11s, finishing second behind the strong Portsmouth contingent. Not far behind for WADAC, and again in very good numbers, were Darcy Hawkins building back to fitness (13th), Rosie Sharrock (17th), Francesca Joslin (18th), Cecily Wilson (22nd), Alexandra Dickinson (26th) and Amelie Gill (27th), nine runners in the top half of the field.
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nWinchester’s U15 boys are suffering an injury plague at present, and so were somewhat short of numbers by their usual high standards. All present and correct and first home in black and gold, however, was Ruben Price in a strong 3rd place, and together with Seb Murray (13th) and Thomas Jacobs (16th), also took third team place on the day. They were ably supported by Sam Wilkinson (19th), Aiden Furby (21st), Adam Perry (33rd) and Will Dickinson (36th).
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nWinchester’s blushes in the Under 17 women’s race were spared by newly arrived Eve Bailey, who ran magnificently (and solo) on debut, contesting the top places throughout and finishing 3rd. Eve will be hoping for some team-mates next time out.
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nIn the U17 men’s race, Will Atkins continued his superb progress with a fabulous run to finish second from lower year, and lead the team to third on the day. With him in the scoring trio were Ben Chesterfield (8th) and the resurgent Ieuan Thomas (16th), followed closely by Thomas Evans (18th) and James Lewis (26th).
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nReports on the achievements of those no longer running in the junior ranks, Annie Mann, Rose Chesterfield, Clara Jackson, Ellie McErlean and Ben Schofield, will be available from other authors !
nThe action moves next to Kings Park, Bournemouth, on December 3rd, where WADAC will hope to have some of the absentees back in action, and ready to tackle the season’s early league table leaders, Aldershot and Portsmouth.