Race 3 Provisional Results (Updated 29/01/2015 11:30pm)
Race 3 Photos
Report By the non-runner
East Down AC’s gazebo was resplendent and the racing routes were marked out to welcome all of the 216 junior athletes and their families. Teams from East Down AC, Newcastle AC, Dromore AC, Burren AC and 3 Ways AC were represented in the latest McGrady Financial Services Junior cross country series. After the unavoidable cancellation of our previous race due to the heavy rain, we all gathered in Delamont for our first race of 2015. Newcastle AC’s juniors who attended seemed to have recovered from their partying the previous Sunday at our New Year party.
Due to a technicality NAC’s promised gazebo did not appear (it wouldn’t fit in to the car…) and we were left using our imagination. Thankfully the weather was kind, providing almost perfect racing conditions for our junior cross country athletes. Registration was well underway and EDAC registration team proved to be particularly busy as they had lots of new entries for our series.
We had lots of brave new entries from the littlest runners in our P4 and under races, 18 boys and a huge number of girls-27! Dare we say it one of the coaches was beaten to the line by his daughter! Coach Eamon ran with the wee ones to support them as they ran their race, many for the first time. Eva McCrickard ran a great race in her NAC junior XC debut, managing to pull out a fantastic sprint finish to beat her dad Eamon over the line. Winning the P4 and under boys was NAC’s Noah Sheridan and the girls winner was Laura Hanna also of NAC. Jack Dornan of EDAC won the P5 boys and his teammate Anna Gardiner won the girls P5. P6 boys winner was Mackenzie Murray or EDAC and in the girls P6 race Lara McCarthy of Burren AC was first over the line. Numbers reduced dramatically for the P7 races and the winners were both from 3 Ways AC, Odrhan Hamilton and Caitlin Coffey. In fact the Year 8 boys race had the smallest numbers possible-just one runner! So, congratulations to Andrew McGrattan from EDAC for actually racing and not just taking a dander around the course to finish em, first in the boys race! In the Year 8 girls race the winner was Maeve Murdock from Burren AC. In the Year 9 boys race the winner was Adam Mckibben from Dromore Ac with Edie Carroll of EDAC winning the girls race. Year 10 winners were Owen Edwards from EDAC and Lucy Kenneally of NAC. Our last races were the year 11 and older and the winners were Ethan Dunne from Dromore AC and Laura Gardiner from EDAC. Remember that it’s not possible to list all of our runners in the report, check out the results to see all of the names. Each runner is encouraged to cross the line as everyone notches up team points and all of our runners are congratulated for their wonderful team spirit.
Thanks to Joe Quinn and Frank Cunningham and all from EDAC for hosting the race in Delamont. Thanks to all of our juniors and their families for attending our racing series, we know that weekends can be busy times with lots of events to attend, and we very much appreciate making the time to attend our series. Thanks also to Pauline McCauley, Catherine McCrickard and Aine Rice for their invaluable help at registration and to Darragh McCrickard for his work in preparing for the races, helping out at the start line and his work afterwards compiling results. Thanks to PJ McCrickard of McGrady Financial Services for his excellent performance on the loudspeaker (the man’s a natural orator!) and for his continued generous sponsorship of the series.
We will see you in February for the last race in our series, more information will be emailed shortly.