NECAA North East XC Championships 2025

This Saturday saw the running of the 2025 North East Cross Country Championships, held at Stewart Park, Middlesbrough.

The ‘North Easterns’ have taken place up in South Shields at Temple Park for the last few years, but a hosting club was unable to be found this year and there was a real fear that the Championships would be cancelled, until Darlington offered to step in as host. Amongst other things, this involves organising a suitable venue, planning a course of varying distances that can cater for all age groups and supplying marshalls and volunteers on the day, As it turns out, we also had to re-organise a medical provider with around 36 hours to go, after the original provider dropped out with widespread staff illnesses at 9pm on Thursday evening!

The main elements of the course were meticulously planned and tested by Jamie with input from Wes and Bernie in the Junior coaching team. This also involved working with the Stewart Park team to avoid any clashes with their parkrun course. The course was set up by Wes and Jamie, taking around 3 hours under the cover of darkness on Friday evening before the NECAA staff applied the finishing touches on Saturday morning, constructing the start area, finishing funnel with timing area and presentation area.

The weather received by the course in the weeks leading up to the event was decidedly wet! Knowing Stewart Park had cancelled previous School XC events after a bit of drizzle, it was a nervous time watching the forecast in the days leading up to the big day. Despite unexpected rain on the Friday, the course was generally holding up well and a good sunny forecast for Saturday meant it was full steam ahead!

It was rare for the event to be held in the South of the region, especially in recent years, but it meant we had a bumper number of athletes turn out on the day (especially with us being host club) and a very strong Junior section having full teams in every age category from U13 to U20, despite a few regulars missing through illness. As well as team category medals being on offer, we were also targeting the Male, Female and Overall trophies!

U13 Boys

The U13 Boys were up first to complete 1 large lap of the course, measuring 3K. Acer Tarn was the only ‘Junior Endurance’ member on the day, with Rhys Price out with illness. Jack Borthwick, Samuel Webber, James Lamb and Joseph Lunn from our Foundation group all stepped up to ensure we had the chance to pick up some team points.

Acer Tarn lead the boys home with a superb 5th in 11:14, even better as a 1st year athlete at this age group, with Jack Borthwick 23rd in 12:21 and Samuel Webber our final counter in 25th place running 12:34. James Lamb came home in 13:35 (38th) with Joseph Lunn completing the course in 13:51 (39th).

After some initial confusion with the results yesterday, we discovered today that the boys actually finished 3rd team overall so there should hopefully be some medals coming the way of Acer, Jack and Samuel!

U13 Girls

Attention then turned towards the U13 Girls where we had a really strong team on display, but they would surely face a battle from a 7 strong North Shields Poly team featuring Ada Penfold and Elsa Hawkins – They too would cover the same 3K course as the boys.

Lucy Hellewell has been in superb form of late, showing real promise by winning Darlington Schools XC in previous weeks and she would be going head to head with Ada Penfold for the win in this race. Unfortunately for the spectacle of the battle, Ada pulled out early on leaving Lucy a free run for the victory in 11:34. She didn’t have it all her own way though as Martha Carr of Prudhoe was only 10 seconds behind at the finish, with NSP’s Elsa Hawkins just 5 seconds further back in 3rd. Ella Harcourt was our 2nd counter to finish, an excellent 7th in 12:06. Thea Hyland battled to finish 11th in 12:27 as final team counter with Jessie Horton-Thomas 26th in 13:42. Congratulations to Lucy who becomes a first time North East Champion, picking up the Centenary Trophy!

This gave us an excellent points tally of 19 from our first 3 runners, enough to take the Gold away from North Shields, as they missed out on an expected top 2 finish after Ada Penfold’s withdrawal. The Poly finished on 33 points to claim 2nd place, but if Ada had finished, it looks likely that they would have claimed top spot. A touch of fortune perhaps but this is racing and anything can happen. We hope Ada is OK and pass on our best wishes to her. An excellent athlete and we’re sure she will be back fighting fit very soon.

U15 Boys

Another super strong category for our Juniors, with 8 athletes in the age group, very much aiming for the team win! The distance was bumped up to 4K for our U15 runners.

Ollie Curran was unsurprisingly our first athlete to finish, as a 1st year U15, he finished a superb 4th in 14:18 – That’s around 3:35/km on a cross country course… (Equivalent to 17:55 5K pace for a comparison!) Amazing stuff Ollie! James I’Anson continued his good form from the Sheffield XC Relays and was 2nd Harrier home in 14:36 (8th) getting the better of Luke Gardner in 14:56 (12th) for the 3 required placings.

Daniel Callaghan was 20th in 15:16, Lucas Rogers tracking 2 seconds behind in 21st with Matty Richardson 25th in 15:48. Archie Appleton made it another in the Top 30, 27th in 16:03 and George Togher the final boy home in 44th.

Our score of 24 from our 1st 3 athletes was enough to edge out Tynedale Harriers on 32 and Wallsend Harriers on 43 to take the Gold again! Silver in the Northern XC Relays, now Gold in the North East Champs… What a team! Ollie picked up the Ensoll Trophy on behalf of the team win.

U15 Girls

Our U15 girls team was made up entirely of new athletes to our Junior Endurance group this year. No expectations, just go and enjoy racing! It’s been an age group where we’ve recently struggled to have enough girls to make a team, so it was nice to get a full team out on this occasion.

This is a very competitive age group in the region, just looking at the amazing Gabrielle Pinder from New Marske Harriers absolutely dominating both locally and nationally! Charlotte Ruston was first Harrier back in 21st position, running the 4K course in 18:04. Followed in 26th by Cicely Morgans in 18:21. Alice Lunn was 32nd in 19:15 and Beth Graham was 42nd in 20.18.

The girls finished 6th team overall, picking up a valuable point for the Overall and Female team standings!

U17 Men

This group of athletes have historically been extremely strong, securing Silver team at the Northern Road Relays as U15’s and also Gold team at the recent Northern 5K Road Race in Redcar. This however, would be a different challenge altogether. All 4 of our team were 1st year U17’s at Cross Country and would be up against a stacked field of not only first years, but also second years including the likes of Alfie Cook, Zander Gribbon and Will Jardine.

The U17 Men saw an increase in distance to 6K for their race, 2 large laps. Just before the start, we lost William Hart through illness leaving just the 3 boys, all knowing they would be the counters for team positions. Zander and Alfie battled it out at the front as expected, but Kirsten-Kyle Sridhar was in his own battle for 3rd. Luckily, Kyle showed fantastic strength to hold on for his individual Bronze in 20:27, giving the team a great platform to push for a team medal.

Meanwhile, Matthew Foster and Tristan Wheeler were battling mid pack, pushing each other to keep up the pace. As we watched the athletes filing past towards the finish, it was looking touch and go for a team medal as we tried to work out which teams had 2 or 3 athletes already through. Matthew just managed to edge out Tristan on the long drag home, finishing 17th and 18th respectively in 22:32 and 22:35.

It was still anybody’s guess as to who was getting the team medals and in what order, but thankfully, after a short wait, Darlington was one of the team names called out as medallists. To our greater surprise, they’d only gone and won Gold! Our combined score of 38 just edged out Tyne Bridge Harriers with 41 and Durham City Harriers with 43. The type of result where just 1 or 2 position changes would have produced a completely different outcome. As a threadbare team of 1st year athletes, this was definitely the most unexpected result of the day, although Jamie did say he’d predicted 1st in this category!

U17/U20 Women

Although there were individual trophies awarded for both age groups, for the purposes of the team competition, they were put together which was great news for us, having 3 U17 Women and 1 U20 Woman.

Zara Jones made it a hattrick of North East titles on this occasion as she won the race and became U20 North East Champion, to join her U17 and U13 successes in the trophy cabinet! Her time of 19:49 for the 5K course was timed just 1 second ahead of Ellie Fellows of Blaydon, another U20 runner. Matilda Owens finished in the Silver medal position in the U17 category and 5th in the race overall, followed by sister Charlotte, who was another unwell in the build-up to the weekend, in 10th overall (5th U17) finishing in 21.02. Chloe Graham was our final U17 runner in 26th place, running 23:57.

Our score of 16 points was easily enough to beat North Shields Poly (24) and Blyth (78) to take the Trophy and a maximum 6 points towards the overall results. Great running!

U20 Men

We’ve had the most unexpected result in the U17M, but the U20M race definitely provided us with the closest team finish possible, and probably in the history of the event given how 2 sets of circumstances unfolded!

We had Alex Boyer, Freddie Hall, Thomas Grayson and Sylvan Tarn representing the club in this one, with Rory Hart unfortunately missing to sit a Uni exam. With only 24 entrants, it was always going to be a tight one, but no-one could have predicted just how tight. Of these athletes, it turned out that there were only 4 complete teams vying for the 3 medal positions. This race was to be run over 8K and featured 17, 18 and 19 year old athletes as of 31st August 2025, so a large spread of ages is possible. Most of our team were towards the lower end of the age scale so it was always going to be a challenge.

Alex was first back for us in an excellent 7th place (28:21) with Freddie next back in 15th place as he battled right to the line (30:13). Thomas completed the trio in 17th place (30:27) to give us a score of 39. Sylvan completed the course in 31:32 in 21st place.

Here is where it gets interesting… North Shields Poly finished 11th, 12th and 16th for 39 points, and Gateshead Harriers finished 3rd, 13th and 23rd… for 39 points! An unbelievable 3 way tie for the medals! In such situations, countback is used on the final counter athlete for each team. In this case, it not only came down to Thomas finishing 3 seconds behind Elliot Moore of NSP for 17th and 16th position respectively for each teams 3rd counter, but Freddie was also awarded the same time in 15th as the athlete in 14th. 2 situations of less than 3 seconds over 8K that were the difference between team Gold and Silver! Still, a very good Silver and 5 more team points in the bag!

Senior Men

We had a bumper team consisting of 10 Men, all challenging for the Top 6 team counter positions. The Senior races have been dominated by the likes of Gateshead and Morpeth in recent years, and this year was no different.

It was a battle from the gun between Chris Coulson of Morpeth and Josh Blevins of Gateshead. A couple of laps in, Coulson had pulled out a decent gap over Blevins which never looked like being closed. Coulson’s constant quick cadence never faltered and the more rangey Blevins had to settle for Silver, losing out by 37 seconds in the end. The excellent V40 Masters athlete from Tyne Bridge, Jarlath McKenna, was a further 42 seconds behind as he secured his place on the podium.

Darlington were lead home by Liviu ‘Lee Johnson’ Ionita in a superb 17th position. I believe this was Lee’s first race back in the colours of Darlington after moving back from North East Project. Great to have you back Lee! Daniel Boyer was 2nd home in 24th place, 32 seconds behind Lee. A superb ‘Masters’ run from Wes Tarn in 39th place secured 3rd Harrier, just edging out Michael Harcourt by 3 seconds and 3 places in a tight finish! John Clifford grabbed the 5th team counter in 60th position followed by Ed Lamb in 78th position. Will Seekins probably would have preferred an 11 mile race rather than 11K, but he came home in 95th for 7th finisher, followed closely by Jonathan Gilroy in 100th and Alistair Hart in 103rd. Thomas Maxwell was our final runner to complete the course in 173rd place. There were 271 finishers in total so that was a top effort from our lads!

Gateshead took the Men’s team honours, 10 points ahead of Morpeth Harriers who were a further 15 points ahead of Tyne Bridge Harriers. North Shields Poly, Sunderland Harriers and Darlington Harriers completed the Top 6, adding another point to the Junior’s mammoth haul from earlier in the day.

Senior Women

Into the final race of the day. The sun was dipping and the wind was picking up for the Women by mid afternoon but the course was largely holding up well. The first 4 positions were counters for the Women’s team awards.

Megan Stenhouse went sub 30 running 29:58 and was a class above from the start, finishing 56 seconds ahead of Helen Warburton (Tyne Bridge) in 2nd. Millie Breese of Morpeth took the final podium position in 31:25. Morpeth also dominated to take the team Gold with 32 points. Tyne Bridge 2nd on 58 points and Sunderland Harriers taking an excellent Bronze with 95 points. Crook AC, Jesmond Joggers and Birtley AC rounded out the Top 6. Our women finished a superb 7th out of 16 clubs!

Stella Jones was back in a Harriers vest as a Senior. Stella was a former Junior North East XC Champion, just like her sister Zara! Great to have Stella back in the club and she did herself and the team proud on her first race back, finishing 25th out of 132 Women in 35.19 for the 8K course.

Naomi Hall had a terrific run as 2nd counter, running the early stages alongside Amy and Sam before zooming off to finish 31st in 35:34! Amy Pickworth was next in 37th and 36:01, just 4 seconds ahead of Samantha Teasdale in 39th and 36:05 as the final team counter. Ellie Howarth was 5th back in 70th position in 39:29 followed by Jo Scott (40:59) in 83rd and Jayne Jeffries (41:00) in 84th finishing together and great to see the legendary Sue Phillips (41:45) competing again, home in 94th place.

Organisers and Volunteers – Thank You!

We really couldn’t have hosted the event without all of the volunteers and organisation behind the scenes. This was a large scale operation and we should all be proud of coming together as a team and a club to pull this off.

There are too many to name individually, but a huge thanks especially to the Marshalls standing out in the cold for 5 hours, course planners, course builders in the dark, pick n mix sweet providers, make up artists, club tent erectors, team selectors/coaches/organisers, sign makers, snacks, sweet treats and drinks providers, parents, medical providers and much, much more, a heartfelt thanks from Jamie and Anne our co-chairs.

The feedback from other teams and runners has been superb. Well done Darlington Harriers & AC!

Overall Results

A fantastic day for the athletes of Darlington Harriers. We made dreams come true (Well… Wes and Jamie’s dreams!) by absolutely smashing the competition. Not only did we win both the Male and Female Championship, we won overall by a landslide margin!