Thursday saw the district stages of the Ulster Schools cross country move to Delamont after Ormeau Pk, District B was postponed on Tuesday.
The infamous hill was a casualty of the weather leaving a zig zag of a track in the lower section of the park for the athletes to negotiate.
All of the girls races were ran before the boys so we had immediate success when in the Mini girls Tara McDonough eased away from her competitors with 500M to go. It was a convincing win and follows on from Tara’s win at our own Hawtin Shield. Ellie Gordon followed in 3rd position which is an excellent achievement given she would have been the youngest in the race. Surely the fruits of Ellie’s dedicated training starting to pay off.
The next race, the Junior girls, had Murphy Millar finishing 3rd and Sarah Moorcroft 8th. Another fine result from two dedicated athletes. In the Minor girls we had six representatives in Megan Briggs 3rd, Rachel Gillespie 5th, Abbie Webster 10th and Ella Andrews making a rare appearance to finish in 13th. The Turner twins Caitlin and Alisha also ran well finishing 9th and 14th respectively. Great grouping from the girls, all six in the top 15. The final girls race, Inter girls run over 3000M, finished with Mollie Brown making a welcome return from injury to finish 3rd, narrowly beaten on the line. Jessica Scott, 4th and Anna Scott 11th were split by Nia McNally who finished 7th. Great grouping again with all four making their way to Mallusk.
The boys kicked off with the Mini’s where Johnny McCracken came in 6th ahead of Adam Skelly, who will be disappointed with his 20th position after training so well, and Finlay Millar. We had our second victory of the day in the Minor boys with Jakob Swann following up on his Mini success last year. Talented Ben Jenkins finished in a very commendable 13th position. In the Inter Boys Thomas Patterson 28th, Cameron Jenkins 39th, Adam Bell 40th and Stefan Yathindran 45th completed the ND representation.
John McNally was the only North Down runner in the Junior boys and finished in a very good 10th position. The Senior boys saw our final winner on the day with Craig McMeechan finishing over a minute ahead of his nearest challenger.
A very successful day at Delamont for North Down with 19 of our athletes qualifying for the Ulster schools at Mallusk on 10th February.
Great to see a large number of NDAC members at Delamont to support the youngsters, always gives them a moral boost. Dave McKibben however, had reason to refer to the hard core of this NDAC support as the North Down mafia! Obviously a reference to their influence on the success of our athletes.