Sydney Striders Juniors: May 2013

Juniors have their own awards party in September, but the two most prestigious awards of all, Winter athlete of the year and Summer athlete of the year, are presented in front of the whole club at their awards event in May. Recipients get a perpetual trophy to keep for a year and a small trophy to keep forever. The trophies are presented by the guest speaker - in this case Olympic marathon runner Lisa Weightman :)

This year, as always, we had a juniors table. Caroline and Tony were there to talk about the winners, Josh Phillips's whole family were there to see him get his 2012 Winter athlete of the year award, Hannah Gibson's mum came along with Hannah to see her get the 2012 / 2013 Summer athlete of the year award, and rising star and sociable Strider Tessa Constantine came along with her dad. A gtreat time was had by all, as you can see from the photos below.

What a glamorous table!, from left: Josh, Caroline, Tony, Greg, Tessa, Hannah, Dzung, Wally and Rietta.

Caroline and Tony looking very happy indeed.

Tessa, Hannah, Lisa Weightman and Josh

Caroline sings Josh Phillips's praises

Josh makes a very good acceptance speech

Josh and Lisa

Hannah makes her acceptance speech - telling everyone what fun training was :)

Hannah with Lisa and her trophies.

A great time was had by all at the State Road Races, as can be seen below. There are plenty more photos of all the races on the ANSW face book page, which I suggest you all 'like'. Also, do send a request to join the 'Sydney Striders Juniors' closed face book group so you can get the news when it happens!!! Full results are on the ANSW website www.nswathletics.org,au.

The 10K was first at 7:45, with many parents running, including me, Andrew and Kate Wilson, Tom Highnam and Michael Halmy, who were all in Striders teams.

Next came the 5K at 9:05, in which we had an under 20 girls team of Hannah, Bethany, Amelia and Jess, winning bronze, with Hannah Gibson top in the state!!. We also had an under 18 boys team made up of 4 from Daniel Francken, David Gardiner, Adam Halmy, Paul Loader and Gus Wong, which won gold with Daniel Francken 4th overall. Our under 16 boys team was made up of 4 from Dan Watts, Fraser McKinlay, Ben Jagger, Nick Corel and Jadon Wilson, which won bronze, with Dan Watts 4th boy overall. Olivia Hogg and her mum ran together in the 5K, and parents Roslyn Halmy and Nick Cooper also had a run - this was because they put the fun run on with the road race this year.

Finally, the much anticipated 2.5K for the under 14s and under12s. We'd had so many dropping out with injuries and illness in the couple of days leading up to the race that we only just managed to get two teams together on the day. Will arrived at the race with no time to pick up his timing chip, as he got stuck in traffic, so did not show up in the results, but luckily we still had just enough! The under 12 girls were gorgeous, as you can see below, and got silver, while the under 14 boys with Tom D, Sophie G, Benji and Ewan also got silver. Benji was 4th under 12 boy in the race and Sophie Gocher was 4th under 14 girl. We had a lot of juniors coming 4th!!!