Young Harriers thrive indoors
INDOOR athletics continues to play a substantial part of Stockport Harriers’ overall sporting portfolio with the club being one of the few in the country to embrace every discipline other than (at the moment) race walking.
And so the indoor season is now in full swing with team Stockport making their mark in the South Yorkshire indoor league series.
None more so than with the under 11 girls’ section where after two rounds of the junior quadrathlon, Stockport easily lead with a “hop, skip and a jump”, not literally, but with a sprint, jump, throw and middle distance event which comprises the total package.
Lola Unsworth easily leads the following pack on 238 points to fellow Harrier Seren Redfern’s second place with 209 points.
Saffron Meade is in seventh place with 171 points and Rosa Ferguson has a tally of 134 in 20th and these Stockport youngsters are well up the leader board with a total of forty four competitors tilting for the accolades before the series winds up in the new year.
Stockport’s Jack Doodson has a good lead with 213 points on Will Lane of City of Sheffield AC with 187 in second place in the under 13 boys’ competition whilst a little further down the board is Sam Ayre (11th) followed by Arthur Kennedy (16th), Leo Ferguson (17th) and George Mcilhone in 42nd position.
Medal potential is still on the cards for Ollie Cox who currently lies third for the under 11 boys and it’s a family affair with sister Rebecca going in the under 13 girls’ quadrathlon. She currently lies 10th out of a total of 45 competitors in this age group.
The activity continues in and around the new year period with further indoor competition opportunities for Stockport Harriers in Glasgow and Sheffield in quick succession before leading into national championship competition from mid January onwards.
There was considerable strength and depth in the senior men’s field at the European cross country championships at Chia in Sardinia with Stockport’s Ross Millington finishing mid table in 32nd spot (29:29).
With Great Britain winning the team prize (28) to Spain’s second (32) and Turkey third with 38 points being the lowest sum of finishing places of the first four from each country, the next international event for Millington will be exchanging the warmth of the Mediterranean for the possible snow and ice of Holyrood Park in the televised Great Edinburgh cross country run on the 7th of January.
One of the strongest road races of the year took place with the Telford 10 kilometre event with Jack Martin consistently managing to sub 30 minutes for a useful 11th place (29:50) out of magnificent total of 1,021 finishers and also well up for Stockport was international athlete Andrew Davies with a finish time of 30:51 in 32nd spot which was small beer compared to his recent 50 kilometre world ultra racing championship exploits in Qatar.
Shorter events are in mind over the festive period with an excursion of three miles and an opportunity to get rid of that “plum duff” factor.
It starts from the Star and Garter public house, Higher Hillgate on Boxing Day, commencing at 11am with proceeds, after expenses, being donated to the worthwhile cause being the Beechwood Cancer Care centre.
All are urged to participate before getting back to the high end events commencing in the new year.