Success for North at 2024 Junior InterAreas!
Juniors from all over Scotland headed north for this year’s junior interarea competition that took place on the weekend of 26/27th November. The North, East and West fielded their strongest teams and battled it out over a relay on the Saturday and the individual on the Sunday, with West hoping to retain their title from last year.
Saturday’s relays saw the best of the morning weather at Keppernach Forest. The Open relay began first with the Girls following 10 minutes later. The first leg completed an orange course, second a yellow and final leg ran a light green. The sun was shining through the trees and casted a lovely light across the forest. but there wasn’t much time to admire the beauty as the first of the juniors came racing through the final stretch of lumpy terrain toward the handover. There was loads of enthusiasm and encouragement from everyone watching which was great to see!
The racing was fast and furious which did unfortunately result in a number of mispunches across both relays. This left East to take the victory in the Open relay, followed by North then West. There was total North domination in the girls with them taking all 3 top spots!
The winning teams were:
Open
| 1st | East | Calum Roberts | Carl Selmer Duguid | Finn Selmer Duguid |
| 2nd | North | Henrik Borrowman | Jolyon Picton | Finlay McLuckie |
| 3rd | West | Fraser Cheyne | Matthew Owen | Peter Owen |
Girls:
| 1st | North | Anna Howard | Julia Ross | Kate McLuckie |
| 2nd | North | Lily Carter | Harriet Ross | Sophie Howard |
| 3rd | North | Rona Laird | Iona Harvey | Charlotte Burton |
After the excitement was over, the juniors and parents all retired to Inverness Youth Hostel for some food and some fun and games, as one of the main focusses of this weekend is to allow to juniors time to socialise and meet others out with their own clubs. Everyone had great fun, and with sweeties to be won at the quiz it all got a bit competitive!
Sunday was much colder and saw some showers, resulting in a few battles trying to get the tents up! Alvie Estate was the venue for the individual races and again saw some speedy racing across all the age categories. At the end of the day, the count came in and saw North taking top spot with 76 points, with West close behind on 66 points. East came into the weekend with a much smaller team, but still put up a fight and produced strong results across the board.
Totalling the scores from the relay and the individual put North on top, stealing the trophy back from West. Congratulations!!
Full results for the relays can be found here and results for the individual are here.
A huge thanks must be extended to everyone who helped make this weekend happen – INVOC for organising the relays, BASOC for organising the individual and Morag McLuckie who was in charge of all the accommodation and food logistics.
