Created by : Thomas Shaw On : Wed, 01/07/2026 - 16:30
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Happy new year to everyone! It has certainly been a fantastic start to 2026 for the Harriers.
Just before the new year bells chimed, our regular fell running contingent Sally and Jim Staveley and Kerry Dickinson celebrated New Year’s Eve by running Wormstones Fell race. A 1250 ft, 5 mile course saw all 3 get course PB’s to start their celebrations with a bang.
The weekend saw lots of XC action. On Saturday a squad headed to the County XC champs at Bulwell. The Under 11 girls squad Lauren Townrow, Bethany Hands and Libby Mould secured bronze with a fabulous performance, swiftly followed by a silver medal for the under 11 boys George North, Oakley Allsop, Freddie North and Hugo McCarthy for a great mornings work by our youngest teams.
The senior men’s team of Tom Shaw, Adam Turner, Bryan Cherry, Nick Mould, Neil Allsop and David Bulmber were up next with all doing great runs, and Tom Shaw qualifying for the Nottinghamshire team at the Intercounty Champs in March. A great result for Tom after a period of injury- even he was surprised!
Next up, our senior ladies’ squad of Darcie Wasnidge, Sally Bulmer and Cath Mhembre putting in a good shift, with birthday girl Darcie doing an outstanding run to qualify as the reserve for the Notts team at the Intercounty Champs.
Under 13 boys Isaac Beresford and Ethan Baxter couldn’t be outdone, and secured a bronze team medal, with Isaac qualifying for Nottinghamshire at Intercounty champs and Ethan in reserve. The under 15 boys team of Oscar Wallace, Jenson White and Heny Marks had a great run, with Oscar also qualifying to represent Notts.
Our under 15 girls Holly Bulmer and Heidi Marks had fantastic runs, with Holly coming in top 10 and making the Notts Intercounty reserve list. For ladies under 17’s, Miley Townrow took 3rd place overall and qualified for Notts.
Amongst very tough competition from across the Nottinghamshire clubs, Worksop Harriers made the club very proud so well done all who ran!
Sunday saw the return of the local senior XC league, a 5-match competition between 5 local clubs, this week hosted by Retford AC. With an incredible start to the series, Worksop’s ladies took 1st place and the men 2nd, a storming start. Points are awarded for each team fastest 7 men and 7 women, with the lowest score being the aim (1 point for 1st, 2 for 2nd etc), but a team also gets a point knocked off for fielding more runners, up to 17. So the aim really is to field as big a squad as possible, meaning every runner counts towards its success! First 7 ladies over the line were Hannah Miller, Kirsty-Fairbairn-Wint, Madi Spencer, Sam Robinson, Amy Ogden, Darcie Wasnidge and Claire Allsop. For the men, Tom Shaw, Ben Rhodes, Matt Daly, Dom Fielding, Adam Turner, Ryan Brown and Adam Jonczyk were the first 7, all backed up by a massive 35 clubmates for a 49 strong squad turnout!
Lastly, at the Sheffield Indoor Open Meeting on Sunday, three of our female combined event squad performed in a range of events.
Layla Gavin (U15W) took part in her first indoor meeting and achieved silver standards, on the PB Awards scale, in both 60m hurdles (10.38s) and 200m (29.56s). Layla is a new addition to the combined events group and has the ability to move up the England athletics rankings very quickly.
In the U20W events, Charlotte Ayton continued her good preparation for the indoor National Championships with strong performances in the 60m hurdles (9.62s), Shot Put (7.31m) and Long Jump (5.18m).
The outstanding performance of the day came from Summer Johnson. Competing in the U17W Pentathlon she achieved a new personal best points score of 2831 points, a gold standard on the PB Awards scale and an improvement of almost 500 points on her last year's indoor total. In achieving this total, Summer was only just short of her PB's in the 60mh (9.77s), Long Jump (4.73m) and Shot put (8.03m). In her high jump she cleared two new PB heights, finishing with 1.57m and another gold standard performance. She then finished her day with an excellent 800m, running a new PB time of 2m 47.89s, an improvement of almost 5 seconds, after a hard day of all round competition.
Next weekend will see several of the squad competing in the Northern Indoor Championships, again at Sheffield.
Author: Nat C