Junior Boys Surrey League, Div 1, Coulsdon, 12 November 2016

U13 Team In Terrific Form

Saturday's Surrey League X/C race over the hilly Coulsdon course produced some superb performances from our ever expanding group, but the standout has to be the U13 Junior Boys team, finishing 3rd out of 14, scoring 96 points and only 3 points behind 2nd placed Walton. We need to remember that until this year we were unable to even put out a full team.All U13 individual runs deserve mention. Most improved run of the day came from Blaine Robinson, doing an amazing impression of the Duracell bunny, having an absolute blinder to finish 10th in the age group, up from 39th in the last match. Henry Shippey continues to improve in leaps and bounds, with his 16th placing up from 20th last time out. Frederick Von Fink and Sam Pound, both representing Belgrave for the first time, placed an excellent 23rd and 29th respectively, finishing at a canter. Next time both will no doubt go off even harder and let the other athletes chase them. With 42 finishers in the U13 category, both of them should be thrilled, there is a lot more to come at the next match. And with competition for U13 team places now fierce, Hector Sheppard was unlucky to miss out, only 5 places behind Sam.Zayd Addicott, now looking as if he is fully recovered from his extensive Achilles layoff, had a terrific race, and performance of the day is difficult to split between him and Blaine. Zayd placed 9th in the U15 age group, up from 23rd at Richmond and 18th overall. He looked comfortable all the way and was still passing the competition on the long downhill run-in. Not far behind in 14th, and 35th, overall was Joseph O'Cleary, moving up a huge nine places from his 23rd place finish at Richmond to 14th on Saturday, and not even looking out of breath in the process. Had we not been missing four of our U17/U15 athletes who were either Sister sitting, attending school events or injured, then I have no doubt Belgrave would have placed in the top 5 U17/U15 teams. Next time. Maybe. Possibly. Probably.A huge thank you to all of our athletes who turned out on a miserable drizzly day to race the two and a half miles over an acknowledged tough and hilly course, and also to their parents for giving up their time and missing the rugby to cheer them on. The other Surrey League teams are now beginning to sit up and take notice of the revived Belgrave Harriers threat. Every one of our athletes ran their socks off and the Club is so proud of them all.U13:1 J Kennedy (HHH) 15:22; 10 B Robinson 17:19; 17 H Shippey 18:25; 23 F Von Fink 18:50; 29 S Pound 19:26.Teams: 1 HHH 149; 2 Walton 99; 3 Belgrave 96; 4 Hercules 95.  14 teams closed inU15:1 A Carruth (Wok) 15:33; 9 Z Addicott 16:09.U17:1 E Bate 15:20 (DMV); 14 J O'Cleary 16:54.