It was a superb weekend for Horwich’s young athletes at the Under-13/U15 Northern Indoor Championships in Sheffield and the Scottish Senior Championships in Glasgow.

On Sunday at Sheffield, Horwich had four athletes in the 60m and 200m. Archie Parker (u13) and Amelia Green (u15) were both competing in their first ever indoor competition and Archie was unlucky not to make the 60m final, missing out by 1/1000th of a second when three athletes ran the same time in the heats, while Amelia achieved two personal-best times. Chidera Ajet (u15) reached the semi-final of the 200m and then got a new PB in the 60m, while Joel Ige finished fourth in 200m final and sixth in the 60m with new PBs putting him high in the national rankings.

In Glasgow at the Emirates Arena for the Scottish Indoor Championships the day before, Sophie Walton (u20) continued her impressive start to the season.

Coach, Trevor Williams said: “The aim this weekend was not about winning or running fast times, but to get three competitive races under the belt in just over two hours and to race against top UK opposition.”

Walton did better than that by winning the Championship, ahead of Hannah Brier, of Swansea Harriers, the 2022 UK indoor national champion, in the final and running another indoor PB of 23.58secs. The time puts her second in the overall UK rankings ahead of the English and UK Championships in the next couple of weekends.

Young athletes had a chance to show pride in their town this weekend by selection for the county schools’ cross-country championships.

The Harriers have a core membership in Horwich and many are fortunate to be selected to represent Bolton, but others run for Wigan, Bury, Chorley and South Ribble.

In the Greater Manchester championships at Heaton Park, there were 12 Harriers selected for Bolton, Bury and Wigan. Isaac Battye continues to collect podium places and took third place running for Bolton in the senior boy’s race. Grace Mort, in the junior girls’ race, was the fourth counter for Bolton which gave them the team prize - Bolton’s only team prize on the day. Charlie Cowburn was running for Bolton in the largest age group, the minor boys, where he achieved a fine sixth place out of 57. Other Harriers running for their town were Ted Gallagher, Aidan McKenna, Harry Yates, Alice Tucker, Gracie Sherbourne, Fern O’Brien and Amelia Shan - all for Bolton. Emma Bradley was the first counter for Wigan in the inter girls’ race and Mark Titmuss was second counter for the Bury team that finished fourth in the junior boys’ race.

At Witton Park, in Blackburn, it was the Lancashire County schools cross-country championships where four Horwich athletes were running for Chorley and South Ribble. For Chorley, Charlotte Wilkinson took fifth in the inter girls’ race to lead the team to fourth place, while in the junior girls’ race Isobelle Wilkinson was a member of the Chorley team that took the team title. In the senior boys’ race, Ben Hall was seventh for South Ribble and Lois Bowl, also representing South Ribble, was the fifth counter for the team that took third.

In parkrun, Luke Foley was second at Sale Water Park in 17:49 and Nick Leigh was fourth, while at Peel, in Salford, Rob Jackson got a new parkrun PB of 18:15, which age-related is probably as good as Rob’s all-time 5k PB of 15:11 in 1999. Gillian Smith earned her 50th parkrun T-shirt at Haigh Woodland and Louis Yates was first finisher at Queens Park junior parkrun.