Podium places were hard to come by for those Harriers who warmed up for the club’s Christmas Party by competing in the 111th North-Eastern Cross-Country Championships at Aykley Heads on Saturday.
On the day, the Under-20 men’s trio of Jack Tallentire, Mark Smith and Chris Bell earned the club’s only medals, team bronze, but that couldn’t mask a nonetheless encouraging day’s racing for the Royal Blues, with several notable team and individual performances.
In this Championships two years ago, Sunderland’s women finished 22nd in the team race on the Town Moor, improving to 16th last year in the blizzard of Sedgefield. This time round team manager Eddie Maddison harboured ambitions of breaking the top ten, and the quartette of Alice Smith, Colleen Compson, Vicky Younger and Nicola Woodward didn’t let him down, improving to 6th place, only eight points behind fourth-placed Gateshead!
Whilst Morpeth’s Olympian Laura Weightman was running away with the individual title, winning by over a minute, Alice led the Wearsiders home in a very competitive 20th place. Not far behind was Women’s captain, Colleen who continued her recent rich vein of form with a superb 27th place finish. Vicky Younger, thriving in the firmer conditions than normal at the popular, if testing Durham venue, moved through strongly for 36th and Nicola Woodward battled hard to bring home the team in 42nd and a collective total of 118 points.
This team is really beginning to reap the rewards of structured, consistent training, and when promising youngsters such as Jess Fox begin graduating to the senior ranks, a team medal is not an unattainable goal in the not too distant future.
The ladies’ male counterparts came up agonisingly short in their team competition, repeating their fourth place finish of a year earlier, behind Morpeth, Durham City and Tyne Bridge. Despite some terrific packing in the twenties and thirties, the squad couldn’t quite make up enough points to medal.
Leading the men home with a terrific performance was Michael Wilson. The 800/1500 specialist, who took silver in the U-20 race last year, is clearly wintering well under the aegis of Bud Baldaro at Birmingham University and executed his race plan to perfection, as he started deliberately easily and moved steadily through the field into 16th position. Another athlete who moved through as the race progressed was second counter Kev Jeffress, who reached 28th, one place and ten seconds ahead of Sparrow Morley, who gave every ounce he had over the three lap, 12km race.
Michael Barker was a further second behind, in 30th before Ian Dixon and Nathan Reed, continuing his encouraging return from Achilles problems, closed the team out in 34th and 35th.
The ever-increasing depth within the men’s squad was clearly illustrated by top 50 showings from Steve McMahon (37th), Andy Powell (46th) and Jason Waite (49th), with Steve Potts also performing well in 57th. Craig Harriman was a solid 71st, ahead of Barry Maskell in 74th. Maskell, the U-20 champion in 2014, struggled in Durham after having footwear problems early in the race, but now back on track having missed a large chunk of training this year, Barry is going to prove a real asset to the men’s squad.
Morpeth’s Jonny Taylor won the individual title, ahead of team-mate Nick Swinburn, with Carl Avery completing a clean sweep for the Northumberland club.
The girls U-17/20 team also finished fourth in their race, with Jess Fox in 6th overall also placing 4th in her age group. Giving great support to Jess were Sarah Knight and Eve Quinn, both U-17’s who placed 18th and 21st overall respectively.
Scott Beattie of Morpeth Harriers was an impressive winner of the men’s U-20 race, but Jack Tallentire, who has impressed in training recently, showed he is in fine form by running a strong, committed race and was rewarded with a top ten finish in 8th. Mark Smith, slightly ring-rusty in his first race for several months following his first term at Loughborough University, dug in hard to finish 13th with Chris Bell also showing strongly in 16th place to edge out Gateshead Harriers for team bronze.
Fourth place became the theme of the day after Connor Prior kicked off proceedings in the day’s opening event, the U-13 Boys race. Always in the leading group, Connor couldn’t quite close the five-second gap to third, but can nevertheless be very satisfied with an excellent effort. Callum Tait finished 45th in the same race.
Evie Compson, showing no ill effects from her Sunderland Schools win at Farringdon two days earlier, confirmed her rich promise with a 12th place finish in her U-13 race whilst at U-15 level Nathan Bland cracked the top 20 with 19th, and Lydia Stoker and Jade Thirlwell were 39th and 42nd respectively.
Sean Mackie was Sunderland’s lone representative in the Boys U-17 race, in 18th position.