Herne Hill Harriers round-up: Silver medals for U15 boys at National Cross Country Relay Championships

Herne Hill Harriers’ U15 boys won silver medals at the National Cross Country Relay Championships in Mansfield on Saturday, writes Geoff Jerwood.

Caspian Holmes ensured a strong start, handing over at the end of the opening leg in fourth place, clocking 6:42 for his team’s fastest time. Leau Roch moved through into second towards the end of the next stage (6:59). Tommy Clerkin had a slender-looking gap to defend in order to hold on to the silver podium place, but he did so superbly as his 6:51 saw him across the line seven seconds ahead of the bronze medal team.

The boys had previously won silver medals at the national road relay championships a month ago and followed that up with bronze medals at the South of England cross country relays a couple of weeks later, the second result being achieved without Holmes in the team.

The senior women’s team originally had high hopes of another medal challenge of their own with the trio who had won the Southern cross relays title, but unfortunately Darcie Hey succumbed to illness during the week and was unable to compete.

Helena Keenan stepped in as a late replacement to ensure a team could still race and, in the circumstances, their ninth place in a strong national field was another very good result.

Lucy Jones had been running the final leg in the recent relay teams, but here she switched to lead her team out, quite literally as she took the “win” on the first of the three-kilometre laps. Her time of 10:00 was the seventh fastest overall ahead of some current female internationals.

Keenan was magnificent in holding on to a top-10 position after being handed a perhaps unexpected lead to defend.

Her time of 11:11 kept the team in a strong ninth position which was well-maintained by Sophie Tooley with 10:20 on an anchor leg which featured several of the fastest athletes in the overall race. On only one occasion has a Herne Hill senior women’s team ever finished higher.

The U13 girls also achieved a top-10 finish as Marnie Millar was 19th in 8:33, then Isabel Carter moved up a place with 8:43 before Skyla O’Brien went through to finish 10th with 8:13.

As well as the silver medal trio, there were two other U15B teams representing Harriers as Arnold Duan (41st with 7:25), Zachary Morris (21st, 7:09) and Ed Cunniffe (7:28) combined to finish 18th and Noah Turner (53rd, 7:37), Herbert Clark (40th, 7:38) and James Clements-Nash (7:56) were 40th of 69 complete teams.

It was very encouraging to see two U20W teams from the club competing in an age group where participation often drops off and both ran well. The A team around a 2.5km lap was Kaitlin Hewitt (29th, 9:40), Hebe Hunter (26th, 10:23) and Izzy Perry (25th, 10:29). The B team comprised Rosalie Laban (44th, 11:29), Vivi Marshall (35th, 10:59) and Layla Ang (32nd, 10:41).

The U15G team were 31st with Sofia Mendes (36th, 8:21), India O’Brien (39th, 8:46) and Zoe Dodgson (31st, 8:43). The U13B team were 39th with Anton Thomas (48th, 8:29), Conor Harrow (37th, 8:41) and John Reynolds (39th, 8:55).

The U13G B team finished 44th, the senior men’s A team 54th and the B team 79th. Both the U17W and the U20M teams were unfortunately incomplete, albeit the latter was filled by a U17 who would otherwise have run in his own age group alone with nobody to hand over to.

PICTURES: HERNE HILL HARRIERS