Australian Cross Country Championships 2014
The NZ Secondary School team had it’s most successful year for results at the Aussie Champs. The champs were held in Albany WA, 4.5 hours drive south of Perth.
Unfortunately the course was totally flat, around school sports fields, which upset many competitors. Also, the
weather was great, 17 degrees, and sunny, so not really cross country weather either.
Hawks runners Harry Ewing and Jacob Priddey competed extremely well, in very tough competitions. Fields are not huge in number, but you have had to qualify for your state to be at the championships. Harry was part of a fantastic NZ U18 team, which were dominant in the leading bunch of runners, and almost looked as good as the Kenyans controlling the race. The NZ team finished with 2nd, 4th, 6th, Harry in 8th, 16th and 32nd. Harry ran really well in a very fast race, and managed to finish in a higher position than what he did in the NZ SS champs.
Jacob finished 6th in the U20 mens race, 2 seconds off 4th, and 7 seconds off 3rd place, in 25.50min. He had the fastest finish of the field, moving past runners and closing gaps on others over the last 500m, but unfortunately left his run too late, after going through a couple of tough patches earlier in the race. Because the U20 race also doubles as the Australian school champs, we are waiting confirmation, but Jacob will be 2nd or 3rd for the schools race. NZ also had runners in 3rd and 12th in this race.
Report by Vaughan Priddey
