Ilford AC Juniors Press Report. 4th December 2017
Essex Veterans & Junior Cross Country Championships
Saturday 2nd December
Writtle College
A small Number of Ilford AC youngsters travelled to the Essex u13s and U15s X Country Champs at Whittle on Saturday.
Ilford ACs Aaron Samuel has had a great X country season so far and In the last 2 weeks has won the English Schools Team Champs, 2nd in the London Youth Games and turned up on Saturday as the favourite to add the County title to his achievements.
Aaron took the lead from the start with the Woodford boy sticking on his shoulder for the majority of the race. The 2 boys pulled away from the rest of the field and were still together with 200 metres to go. Aaron then pushed away in the remaining part of the race to be crowned Essex Champion 2017.
The top 4 athletes in each age group scored in the team event and so it was key that Ilfords 3 other athletes pushed themselves.
Jack Wright , running his first Essex Champs for Ilford had a great race. Even though he had a fall during the race he got up to come a real credible 14th place and shows how much potential he has.
Farris Patel, running in trainers as he forgot his spikes, battled his way round in the slippery conditions and used his speed at the end to pass about 5 other athletes in the last 100m, to come 18th.
The 4th Ilford Athlete home was Bradley Deacon, who gets better with every race . Bradley went off very quick and was in the top 20 early on. Bradley maintained his running to once again come a credible 26th.
The great performances from all the boys enabled the Ilford boys to secure a bronze medal for the second year running, and shows how much this team has moved on.
The only other athlete who competed on Saturday was Matthew Hick in the U13 race. Matthew got a great start and maintained this and was in the top 8 for the majority of the race and eventually came home 10th. Matthew just missed out in representing Essex in the Inter-counties but hopefully this run gives him belief he can get into these teams in the near future
Overall another successful champs for our small but great Youngsters team
