English Schools’ Athletics Cup Success

For those who do not visit St Oswald’s very often during the Trinity term, it has been the venue for a hive of athletic activity with lots of talent on show, particularly in the younger age groups. This has manifested itself through the success of the RGS teams in this year’s national ESAA Cup competition.

Leading the way have been the U14s (Year Eight primarily), with both boys and girls teams making it through to the Midland A Final (top eight schools in the Midlands) at Solihull on Monday. Ideal weather conditions, sunny with just a gentle breeze, helped the boys equal their best-ever position in finishing third behind the winners, Fairfax School, and runners-up, Northampton School for Boys.

Local rivals, Bromsgrove School were no match this time for RGS who gave a particularly strong performance on the track with wins for Niall Southall (300m) and Myren Madden (200m). However, it was the all-round contribution of all 14 athletes that led to their impressive score of 398 points, an improvement of 35 points on the previous round. 

Not to be outdone, the girls also rose to the occasion in finishing sixth school, with a magnificent School record of 27.5 seconds in the 200m by Beth Rutter.

The U16 teams (Years Nine and Ten) qualified for the Midland B Final. Again the boys led the way, this time with a score of 425 points, which meant they finished second to Loughborough G S. The highest points contributor was Ben Hughes (300m and High Jump winner), closely followed by Ben Poole-Phillips and James Harris. 

The girls finished fourth in an event won by Oxford High School, with Grace Murray and Ria Pedlingham contributing most points.

Other athletes to break School Athletics Records in recent weeks have been Darian Moore (Year Seven) in both the 100m (12.5 secs) and 200m (27.4 secs) and James Dipple (Year Nine) who broke the 800 metre record that had stood since 1995 with a time of 2 minutes, 11.2 seconds.