East District XC Relay Championships, Livingston, 11 October

The curtain raiser for this cross country season took place at Livingston where we fielded 3 teams of junior athletes and also had 3 runners without complete teams.

Our Girls A team comprising Lila Robertson, Ella Hunter and Ella Tanner finished in 30th place and were followed home by the B team of Greta Shaw, Olivia Denholm and Norah Thompson in 42nd spot. Skye Pringle ran as a solo U13 and was hot on the heels of Greta, just a second behind in the end.

We had no U15 boys so Brody Scanlon ran up an age group alongside Finlay Gallagher and Fraser Cheyne and they finished in a very respectable 22nd place. We also had a couple of U13 boys run without a team – Alexander Robertson and Jack Morrison – which was great for their experience.

National XC Relay Championships, Cumbernauld, 25 October

Illness and injury caused some late changes to the line ups for this one where we ended up only fielding 2 full teams. The Girls A team reconvened and moving from district to national proved no problem at all as they finished 31st of 92 teams.

The Boys team required two athletes to run up an age group where Jack Morrison, Brody Scanlon and Thomas Arnott combined to finish in 63rd place.

East District XC League Race 1, Kirkcaldy, 1 November

A small contingent of our regular XC juniors made the trip to Kirkcaldy for the first league race of the season.
Representing the boys we had Harris Robertson (U11) starting off strongly with a 9th place finish.

At U13 we had Brody Scanlon showing continued good form in 16th spot. Thomas Arnott enjoyed running within his own age group this time around and finished in 31st place. While Joel Gillan’s hill-running exploits helped him to a fantastic 7th place in the U17 race.

Lila Robertson was first up for our junior girls in the U13 race where she took a very respectable 24th place. Lila was followed by our only complete team of the day who took 9th place in the U15/U17W race with Emily Watkin putting in a great performance to take 10th place closely followed by Ella Hunter in 16th and Ella Tanner (25th in U17 race).

Big thanks to Liz Robertson for looking after the juniors at this event.

SAIL Match 1, Glasgow, 2 November

27 junior athletes took part in the first of the indoor league matches for this season.

This was the first event where the new age groups came into play and as they are based on next year’s age groups there were some raised eyebrows from parents and athletes alike!

In general, we had good event coverage, although a couple of dropouts at U16/U18M left those age groups a little sparse. Special shout out to the U14 girls who had to chop and change events last minute to cover for a team-mate who fell ill on the day.

On a day with many excellent Central performances, Leo Chan probably pipped it with some exemplary sprinting in terms of athlete of the day.

Short Course XC Championships, Lanark, 8 November

We were looking light on numbers for this one before being further hampered with illness. Only 5 juniors took part at this one with Emily Watkin maintaining her great season taking 10th spot at U15 being pushed to the line by teammate Ella Hunter in 11th with Rachel Fullbrook coming home in 59th.

Norah Thompson finished in 57th spot for the U17s while Gavin Rodger was our lone boy on the day and he took 43rd place in his U17 race.

East District XC League Race 2, Dundee, 22 November

Our U11s started in style at race 2 with Annie Arnott taking 2nd place in the girls race and Harris Robertson improving on an already strong season start by taking 3rd spot in the boys race.

At U13, we had our ever presents, Lila Robertson (21st) and Brody Scanlon (16th) doing us proud once again in their respective races.

Thomas Arnott finished in 31st place (again!!) in his U15 race. While in the Girls U15/U17 race, Emily Watkin (very impressive 8th overall, 4th at U15) and Nicole Taylor (35th) kept the good results coming in. Unfortunately injury prevented Norah Thompson from completing this one.