AFD were host club for the 2nd match of the Hampshire Cross Country League staged at Wellesley Wodds on the 9th November.
The event was complicated by 4 football matches taking place on the playing fields at the same time. The parking team did a superb job getting all the cars parked while the officials and marshals ensuresd the raceses ran smoothly, a credit to the club. Date for the diary for when the club is staging other events this year are Hampshire Schools CC om Saturday 18th January 2024 and Sunday 2nd March 2024for the Young Athletes League both at Wellesley Woods.
AFD runners put on a dominate display with Aldershot Farnham & District’s runners filled the top six places in the under-15 girls’ race when the club hosted the second meeting of the Hampshire Cross Country League on Saturday. Kitty Scott won, beating Tilly Robertson by 33 seconds (the same margin as in the opening meeting), and Katie McBride, in third, closed the scoring team. The procession was continued by Poppy Guest, Otelia Garcia Davis and Naomi Walmsley.
Katie Pye dominated the senior women’s race and won by fifteen seconds from City of Portsmouth’s Cassie Thorp. Georgie Bruinvels, third, and Kate Estlea-Morris, fourth, were the other members of AFD’s victorious trio. Pye, Maya Jobbins and Katie Ealden (all three u17s) won the u20s’ section.
Joe Wigfield, runner up in the senior men’s event, led Callum Charleston, who was third, Tom Chandler, fourth, Archie Marshall, seventh, and Luke Prior, fourteenth, to AFD’s triumph. The club’s veteran men won their section with Christopher Tizzard, Mark Symes and Thomas Clayton.
There were wins for the u15 boys with Blas Rivero-Stevenet, third, Jack Procopakis, fourth, and Lewis Bryce, twelfth, and u13 boys (Sam Bryce, third, Rafi Weeks, sixth, and George Hunt, seventeenth). In the non-scoring u11 girls’ competition, AFD’s Evie Jones and Emily Walmsley were first and second.