Hall School Cross Country

For the second year the Sports Department took the girls’ Running Squad down to the Queensmere pond for the annual Hall School Wimbledon Cross Country event. After coming 9th in last year’s event, we were keen to improve on this position as we were taking down a strong squad.

To those of you who may be unfamiliar with this event, you have a squad of 5 who run…well sprint, in a relay around a lung-busting 500-600m track. We had a strong squad consisting of, (in the order they ran in), Girls’ Sports Captain Lilyella Harland Fairweather, Jessica Tabraham (a Prep 4 pupil who really showed her class on the day!!), Chezelle Bingham, Polly Ruppel and Harriet Makin.

During the race our girls did very well, often pushing for a top 3 position, however the opposition were of a good calibre and it was an exciting race right up to the finish! The Parkgate team were unlucky to eventually come in 7th place, as the distance between 2nd and 9th place was only about 20 metres but our aim was to improve on last year’s effort and we did that. I can’t thank the girls enough for their effort and I was very proud of each of them, especially, and it’s hard to pick anyone out, Jessica Tabraham who ran one of the most impressive races I have seen as a sports teacher and she is really one for the future!! Well done girls.

On Friday 25th November we took the boys running squad down to the same venue for their event. However, for the first time we decided to give some of our younger boys a run out as well; a reward for some fantastic efforts in the Tuesday & Thursday running clubs. So in our Prep 3 team we had (again in order of running) Jack Schaafsma, Toby Makin, Tommy Harland Fairweather, Finn Moore and Jack Martin. We had high hopes for this age group even though we had put two Pre-Prep 2 boys in a Prep 3 race. As our first runner set off, it dawned on the rest of the squad just how hard this was going to be. We gave it a great go and all the boys did exceptionally well, especially Tommy and Toby taking part in their first ever competitive event for Parkgate. However it wasn’t to be and in a very competitive field we came in 6th of out 10. Again, the margin of distance between 2nd and 8th was so slim it could have been very different but this will have served as great learning curve and hopefully spur on the younger boys who will definitely be involved in this event next year.

Onto our Prep 6 team, like the previous year, we had a mixed bag of age groups in our team, Boys’ Sports Captain Finn Filer-Thomas (Prep 6), Wafa Dajani (Prep 4), Theo Moreland (Prep 6), Max Butler and Charlie Kendrick (Prep 5), the latter two getting their chance after great attendance and efforts in running club and on sports day respectively.

We knew that some of the schools we were competing against had good runners and we even recognised a few that we competed against last year, but we backed our ability and I believe we had the right order of runners to really have a go at getting a medal. As we set off we managed to stay in contention and had a real chance with Theo Moreland putting in, along with Jessica Tabraham in the girls’ fixture, one of the most remarkable races I have ever witnessed, but again we were the nearly men as we got squeezed out of the race, finishing in 9th place. You can’t fault any effort on the day and I was standing proudly as a Head of Sport after watching our pupils put in so much blood, sweat and tears (quite literally!!) on the day.