THREE elite young athletes from Harlow AC’s junior endurance squad competed for their County Schools teams at the prestigious English Schools Cross Country Championships on Saturday 5th March 2016.

For our athletes to even be selected to compete at these races, they have to endure hard qualification rounds through their schools championships, local district championships and then finally have to qualify for the County Schools teams – which is really hard!! This is not easy and so many athletes never make this level, so I’m so proud of them to just get to compete against the ‘best of the best’ is a real honour and I’m really proud to be their coach.

All our athletes were competing against athletes who are older as they at the bottom of their age groups.

In the Junior Girls Race, Charlotte Pratt, who was suffering with a heavy cold had a tough day at the office to finish in 246th place from 339 finishers.

In the Intermediate Girls race, Lottie Rowedder had a storming run to finish in 88th place from 343 finishers and was not far behind the leaders at the finish.

In the Intermediate Boys race, Lewis Harknett ran bravely against really tough opposition to finish in 156th place from 355 finishers. Lewis was part of the 8 strong Essex boys team who won the 8 scoring team race to be crowned English Schools Team Champions for 2016 – this is a huge achievement !!!

Photo below: the pride of HAC L to R; Charlotte Pratt, Lewis Harknett (in the Essex Schools vests) and Lottie Rowedder (in the Herts Schools vest)