Northern success at Junior Inter Areas
More than 100 juniors from all over Scotland converged on Deeside for the annual Scottish Junior Inter Areas, on the weekend of November 9th & 10th. Teams from the North, East and West battled it out over a weekend of competition and fun with relays on the Saturday and individual races on the Sunday.
The North area was comprised of 52 juniors from BASOC, INVOC, MAROC, Moravian and GRAMP; the West’s newly formed SWAT squad had 30 juniors from CLYDE, FVO and AYROC and the East had 23 juniors from ESOC, ELO, INT, RR, KFO and TAY.
The competitors all converged on a frosty track in Scolty Woods on Saturday ready for the relays. The boys/open set off first with the girls relay starting shortly after. Both started with an orange leg, handing over to yellow and the final leg ran a light green course. It wasn’t long before the first of the juniors returned racing out of the woods and down to the handover point at the junction of the forest tracks. Although cold it was great fun to watch the enthusiasm as everyone raced hard.
Unfortunately the 1st teams finished in both the Open and Girls, both from the North, had miss-punched which left West to claim victory in the Open relay and another North team to claim victory in the Girls.
The winning teams were:-
Open
| 1st | West | James Hammond | Jamie Connor | Pierre Lardet |
| 2nd | North | Jonas Newey | Ranolph Whitehead | Oscar Shepherd |
| 3rd | East | Laurence Ward | Calum Robertson | Angus Ivory |
Girls
| 1st | North | Isobel Howard | Kate McLuckie | Hannah Kingham |
| 2nd | East | Ellie Darlow | Lucy Ward | Rachel Brown |
| 3rd | West | Rebecca Hammond | Rachel Godfrey | Hannah Kingham |
The event finished with a prizegiving in the woods, with a fantastic podium made from tree stumps.
The total scores after the relays were North 68, West 44 and East 36.
Afterwards the juniors all retired to hostels for food, fun and games, as one of the main focusses of the weekend is to allow juniors to meet others from out with their club. The plan had been for them all to stay at Aberdeen Youth Hostel, however a refurbishment of the hostel had resulted in fewer beds. The East and West were therefore based there and the North at Huntly. Great fun was had by all and we believe there might even have been some sleep.
It was another bright and cold day as the juniors arrived at Cambus O’May for the individual races on the Sunday. There was lots of friendly rivalry on show with the younger age classes hotly contested. At the end of the day, East and West drew on points for the Individuals with each scoring 46 points, however the strength (and size) of the North team was evident as they scored 81 points in the Individual.
All that was left was to add up the final scores for the weekend and North were again the winners, keeping the trophy for another year. Congratulations to the North!
| North | West | East | |
| Relays | 68 | 44 | 36 |
| Individual Boys | 36 | 27 | 25 |
| Individual Girls | 45 | 19 | 21 |
| Overall Total | 149 | 90 | 82 |
Full results for the relays are available at https://grampoc.com/2019/11/09/student-and-junior-relays-scolty-9-11-19/ and for the individuals at https://www.marocscotland.org.uk/events/cambus-omay-10-nov-2019
Finally a huge thank you to everyone who made the event happen – GRAMP for organising the relays, MAROC for the individual races and Jenny Hall and Katja Neumann for organising all the logistics of the Junior Inter Areas – events, food, beds, games, prizes and lots (and lots) more.
