ESAA Cross Country Cup Final

Range High School, Formby, Lancashire

The English Schools Athletics Association ‘Cross Country Cup’ is an annual team competition for young athletes aged between 12 years and 16 years of age. It is open to both boys and girls who represent their schools in two age categories. Junior boys and girls who must be aged at least 12 years but under 14 and inter boys and girls aged at least 14 but under 16 years of age. A total of 1661 teams from 579 schools nationwide were entered for the competition.

The opening round saw all the entrants competing in their local area with the highest placed teams going forward to compete in the regional final which was held on Saturday the 12^th of November at the Leeds Grammar School.  Four teams from the Hull and East Riding area qualified to compete at the regional event and one of them the South Hunsley junior boys team which included Kingston’s Thomas Smales  finished in 3^rd place in the regional final and qualified for the cup final which was held at the Range High School in Formby, Lancashire on Saturday the 3^rd of December.

Each team consisted of six athletes all of whom run in the race but only the leading four runners in each team were scoring competitors and in the event of aggregate scores being equal then the winning team would  be that who’s last scoring runner finished the nearest to first place.

There were 141 runners in the junior boy’s race and the first member of the South Hunsley junior boy’s team to finish was 13 year old Thomas Smales who covered the course in a time of  10:27s and crossed the line in 62^nd place. Oliver Lloyd was in 86^th place and ran a time of 10:40s and Josh Featherstone was 100^th  in 10:46s with Isaac Hutchinson 110^th in 10:53s. They were the four scoring athletes with non scorers Josh Smith 111^th also in a time of 10:53s and Jay Greenley 132^nd in 11:26s. The South Hunsley team were placed 22^nd in the team competition.