Horwich’s young athletes had excellent results at the North West Sportshall event at Leigh Sports Village.

Chidera Ajet was first in the under-13 vertical jump, setting a new national record, and was second in the Two-Lap Race, helping the Greater Manchester boys’ team win the u13 competition.

At u11, Abigail Ajet was second in the standing long jump and Malachi Howard was third in the vertical jump as the GM team took second place in the u11 competition.

Sarah Lawman was busy as she got a sixth place in the u11 girls’ Vertical Jump at Leigh and then gained a first place in the 150m outdoors at the Trafford Medal meeting in a time of 23.39secs - as well as competing in the 75m and 800m.

At the Trafford event, there were early season-best times for Joshua Gregory (75m and 150m), Archie Parker (75m and 150m) and Grace Freary (150m and 1200m), with each gaining a third place in at least one of their events at u13. Evie Parker achieved a fourth place in the u15 200m race.

It was the last hurrah of the 2022/23 cross-country season last weekend with the English Schools’ Athletic Association Cross-Country Championships at Wollaton Park, Nottingham.

This event brings together the best athletes in each of the 46 English counties to compete to be the best in the country and once more there were representative honours for four Horwich athletes.

Isaac Battye had the best individual Horwich performance with a 21mins 29secs run in the senior boys’ race, claiming sixth position in the Greater Manchester team that finished 13th.

Benjamin Hall was running for the Lancashire team that finished 10th in the senior boys’ race as he clocked a time of 21:52 for the 7km course, while Charlotte Wilkinson added yet another county vest to her collection and was fifth counter in 14:23 for the Lancashire team in the intermediate girls’ race, which finished 33rd. Georgia Clarkson was sixth counter for the Greater Manchester team that finished eighth in the junior girls’ race.

At Wigan Festival road races, in the 5km, Emma Bradley was first u18 female and achieved a new personal-best race time of 22:45 for 67th place out of 499 runners. Hev Pinnell was 393rd.

In the half marathon, Jeanette Lewis had a strong run for 297th place in 1:56:58 to take fourth out of 30 runners in the F45 category, while Lawrence Pinnell, Paul Lewis and Julie Williamson also achieved good results.

In the Mad Dog Southport 10k, Lesley Davidson forsook her usual parkrun and got a time of 1:15:30 for 1,092nd place.

In parkrun, there were second places for Harry Yates and Danny Hope. Harry is still an u13 age runner so this was a fine result in 19:54 at Haigh Woodland. Meanwhile, at Witton in Blackburn, Danny took second place on the hilly course in 19:35.

The Stretford course is one of the fastest parkruns and four of Horwich’s men who have featured highly in the club’s cross-country achievements took it on with Luke Foley coming in first in 16:15. Simon Bruton and Mike Hampson were within 10 seconds of Foley - Bruton having the best age grading (82.62 per cent) with Nick Leigh on 81.08 per cent in 24th place.

The best age-graded result was at Peel, where Rob Jackson achieved 83.60 per cent and Richard O’Reilly got 80.38 per cent, with Tony Hesketh finishing as first M70.

U15 Amelia Shan ran her 25th parkrun and celebrated with a new PB of 25:36.

At Bolton junior parkrun, at Queens Park, April Mort also got a new PB of 12:14 and will no doubt be looking forward to a second season of fell running coming up soon.