SIMON Pymm sits second in the seniors overall rankings for the South East Lancs Cross-Country League after his fifth place at Leigh Sports Village.

The Horwich Harrier lies one point behind Scott Matthews of East Cheshire after the latest outing at the edge of Pennington Flash.

Great performances at Leigh also put several juniors in podium positions with only one more round to go at Chorley on February 18.

Matthew Mair and Isaac Simmonite are currently first and second in the under-13 section, while Isabella Merritt leads the girls’ u13 section and Lewis Wilkes and Robert Seddon are second and third in the u15s' series respectively.

For the vets, Gary Chadderton (V50) is in third and Tony Hesketh is second in the V65 series.

In the team competition, the u13 boys and girls and the u15 boys lead their sections.

Horwich also has a strong interest in the Sportshall series which gives track and field junior athletes the chance to develop their skills through the winter months.

On Sunday in the final round of the Greater Manchester Sportshall championships at SportCity in Manchester, the u11 boys took second place for the series and other young Harriers took individual places, pleasing coach Gemma Stokes.

In parkrun, Richard Howarth resumed his winning ways with first place at Preston and Lukas Siska continued his great run of first places, this time at Haigh Woodland.

Paul Muller had to settle for second place this week at Lytham Hall.

Ellie Baker, Imogen Andreassen, Toby Middleton and Matthew Smith turned up for yet more great performances from the juniors at the senior parkrun events.

Horwich RMI results: Inskip half marathon (Preston) – 149th Ian Hamer 1:36:31, 329th Julie Williamson 1:58:48;

South East Lancs XC League (Leigh) – u11 boys – 6th Ethan Isaacs 8:34, 16th Lucas Collings 9:04, 26th Aidan McKenna 9:50, 31st Eliott Whittle 10:34; u11 girls – 5th Emma Bradley 8:47, 21st Alice Tucker 9:52; u13 boys – 2nd Matthew Mair 9:25, 4th Isaac Simmonite 10:09; u13 girls – 2nd Isabella Merritt 10:27, 4th Milly Lever 10:48, 7th Freya Whittle 11:00; u15 boys – 2nd Lewis Wilkes 14:23, 4th Robert Seddon 14:47, 9th Kieran Kinealy 17:00; seniors – 5th Simon Pymm 39:52, 51st Gary Chadderton 46:48, 55th Doug Fleming 47:34, 72nd Ian Collings 49:10, 120th Tony Hesketh 53:56, 151st Lawrence Pinnell 61:49.