James Dargan led a quartet of runners from Aldershot Farnham & District to the team title when he won the junior men’s race at the South of England Cross Country Championships. Dargan, last year’s under 17s champion, had won the u20s’ event from Quinn Miell-Ingram at the UK Cross Challenge meeting in London a week earlier and, on Saturday in Beckenham Place Park, he beat the Radley man into second again. The bronze medal went to Joseph O’Connell, ahead of Liam Stone, who was fourth, while Matthew Pickering in tenth, completed AFD’s scoring team.
AFD provided both the team and individual silver medallists in the u13 girls’ competition. Naomi Walmsley improved from eighteenth last year when finishing two seconds behind Brentwood Beagle Summer Smith (fifth last year) and four seconds before Chiltern Harrier Kara Gorman who repeated her bronze medal of last year. Poppy Guest was fifth, Harriet Robertson seventeenth and Felicity Croucher 28th.
In the u15 girls’ race, Kitty Scott was runner-up to Olivia Forrest of Brentwood Beagles, last year’s silver medallist, while finishing ahead of Barnet & District’s Jorjia March who beat her to the National u13’s title last season. Tilly Robertson, seventeenth, Katie McBride, 22nd, and Katie Ealden, 26th, were the other members of AFD’s winning quartet. Katie Hughes, sixth, Kate Estlea-Morris, seventh, Georgie Bruinvels, ninth, and Maddie Jordan-Lee, fifteenth, took the senior women’s title for the club.
AFD also had the team and individual silver medallists in the u17 women’s where Katie Pye led home Lottie Quinn, 26th, Emmeline Orbell, 33rd, and Eloisa Symonds, 40th, A third set of team silvers was gained by the junior women’s team of Pippa Roessler, fourth, Anna Hedley, eleventh, Niamh McLoughlin, 28th, and Alysha Mead , 29th. Callus Charleston claimed the bronze medal in the senior men’s contest