Young Athletes 11th October 2016  

ESSEX CROSS-COUNTRY LEAGUE
One Tree Hill, Langdon Hills, Stanford-Le-Hope
Saturday 8th October

Young Athletes
Although the weather is still warm, Saturday saw the start of this year’s cross country season. The first race was the opening Essex Cross Country League at One Tree Hill in Thurrock. The Ilford youngsters had athletes in three races.
First up was Aaron Hick who is only 8 years of age and was in the Under 11’s race, despite giving away almost 3 years to some of the athletes Aaron had a great run to claim 22nd place.
Next up were the U13’s in which Ilford had three athletes,Matthew Hick made a great start and was always up with the leaders, Mario Dobrescu a sprinter by trade was having his first ever outing over the country.The final member of the team Euan Johnstone has missed a bit of training recently so made a cautious start. As the lap progressed, Matthew continued to hang in with the lead group, but was unable to respond when the first three broke away. However he hung to take a brilliant 4th place in a time of 12.48. Mario was enjoying his first outing over the country and worked his way through the field to finish in 18th in 14.03. Euan did not have such an enjoyable run and took a heavy fall in the forest section of the course, he managed to get up and finish in 31st in 15.43. Unfortunately with only three athletes Ilford did not finish a team.

Ilford a had a team of five in the U15’s and Mungo Prior and Aaron Samuels both made good starts, Farris Patel got caught up at the start and had to work to get near the leading group, Jack Halil dressed up for arctic conditions was moving, with Bradley Deacon close behind. Mungo and Aaron continued to remain with the lead group as they moved into the second lap, with Farris still trying to regain contact. Further down, Jack was finding the dry ground to his liking and had moved ahead of Bradley.
As they the last part of the course, Mungo had moved into 2ndplace, but believing he still had another lap to go did not sprint on the final hill and ended up finishing 4th.Aaron had a great finish for 10th place, closely followed by Farris in 13th. The team was closed out by Jack in 33rd place,with Bradley finishing strongly for 45th. Ilford finished with 60points which was good enough for second place behind Thurrock in the team event.