Our Spartans did themselves proud at the 2021 APS Cross Country Championships held Wednesday 5 May at the Runaway Bay Sports Fields giving their best overall team performance in more than a decade. The weather was challenging with endless rain and chilly temperatures; exactly how a Cross Country event should be, muddy and wet!
The Senior Team Won the overall Team Percentage Trophy (first time since 2009) and we also finished fourth in the Aggregate points Trophy (only 3 points off third place). The Junior Team finished second in the overall Team Percentage Trophy and fourth in the Aggregate points Trophy. These results are a great indication that our Cross Country programme is improving well and, on the way up.
An overview of our Age Teams and best performed Spartans is as follows:
*All Spartans who placed in the Top 7 places will now continue onto the South Coast Cross Country Championships in a few weeks’ time.
Some of our Spartans were outstanding and in the Junior Squad our 12yrs Boys Won their Team event thanks to three top 10 placings and an excellent win from Aaron McQuaid (first), who ran the second half of the entire race with one shoe after losing the other one in the mud! Very impressive. Other placegetters in the Juniors – Ella Carson (second) ran a tough race; Jacob Moir (second) is a superb talent coming through and Jorja Grocott (third) continues to perform when it matters most. Special mention to Cooper Rana-Smith and Kasia Pitura for a couple of excellent (fourth) places.
For the Senior Squad our placegetters where the highly impressive and talented Aspen Anderson (first) who dominated her age group and seemed to just glide over the heavy track to victory. Indie Seccombe (second) and youngster Zac Moir (second) were equally impressive being beaten only by very high-level athletes; Starr Scott (third), James Gell (third), Cru Scott (third), Alex Halloran (third) all achieved podium finishes and this highlights the work they have all put into their consistent and disciplined training. Special mentions to Erin Shepherd (fourth), Georgie Zerbst (fourth), Miku Adachi (fifth), William Warwick (fifth) and Ryan Hisco (fifth) for some excellent performances and finishing in those valuable top five placings.
As Head Coach of the Cross Country and Athletics Teams it has been so great to work with these students in conjunction with our other coaching staff. I would like to especially thank Glauber Scattolini (Triathlon Coach) for being so accommodating and supportive of our programme, Glauber has worked hard to build up the Triathlon programme and this has become a great asset to our Cross Country Team. Also, a massive thank you to Natalie Nugent and Claire Walker for all their early morning coaching support to assist myself at every session and again on the day of competition, your support really makes such an important positive difference, thank you, I really appreciate the support! Thank you also to Kate Webb for organising and looking after the Junior Spartans throughout this journey, all of the Somerset staff who came out in the terrible weather to officiate and supervise the students and a big thank you to our amazing logistics staff, who do so much behind the scenes – setting up and removing all of our tents and equipment without us ever knowing they were there.
Lastly, a massive thankyou to all our fantastic students and their parents, for turning up to all the training sessions week in week out. We are really building a great team culture at Somerset College and we still have so many positive things to improve upon in the future.
Congratulations to everyone who participated on the day!
A further update, last weekend we had the Queensland Schools Cross Country Championships in Ipswich where seven of our Spartans competed. Aspen Anderson (15yrs) and Indie Seccombe (18yrs) both won their events and our now the Queensland State Cross Country Champions! Starr Scott (17yrs) placed fourth with another excellent performance. Congratulations to these athletes and all the Spartans who participated.
Type on the line above then press the Enter/Return key to submit a new search query