Running in the same order as they had when winning the national road relay last month, Aldershot Farnham & District’s under-15 girls took the English Cross Country Relay title at Mansfield on Saturday. Tilly Robertson was ninth on the opener but only fourteen seconds behind the leader, Windsor Slough Eton & Hounslow’s Kara Gorman who had clocked the fastest time at Sutton Coldfield.
At the end of the next leg, English Schools junior bronze medallist Poppy Guest handed over to Kitty Scott, the gold medallist, within a second of WSEH who had held their lead. The AFD athlete soon passed Tara Ferguson and, with twenty seconds to spare, took the club’s third consecutive victory in this age group. The club’s B team of Katie McBride, Naomi Walmsley and Anna Rattray was fifth out of the 71 that finished.
The senior women were both silver and bronze medallists. For a while the B team headed the A. Amy Griffiths, having taken over from Pippa Roessler, moved through the field to second as Kate Estlea-Morris, who had taken over from Millie Jordan-Lee, improved the A team to fourth. National champion Niamh Brown anchored the latter to silver by overtaking Katriona Brown but Belgrave Harriers were well clear in first.
There was a set of silver medals for AFD’s u17 women. After legs by Maya Jobbins and Katie Ealden, they were in ninth. Katie Pye, the European Youths champion at 3000 metres on the track, set off on the anchor but the forty seconds lead of Ellarose Whitworth, herself an English Schools 3000 medallist and National cross country medallist, proved a sufficient buffer and the gold medals went to Lincoln Wellington by a margin of 26 seconds.
Bronze medals were achieved by the junior men. Matthew Pickering, Jacob Pearce and Owen Smith helped to ensure that AFD claimed more medals than anyone on a day when no club won more than one title. The senior men finished fifth with Callum Charleston, Joseph O’Connell, Ellis Cross and Sam Eglen. Jack Procopakis, Daniel Orbell and Blas Rivero-Stevenet combined for seventh in the u15 boys’ event.