Winter League Winners 2025/2026

With our final race of the winter league now completed at the Allan Scally Relays last weekend (full report to follow) and following the informal announcement on socials, we are now in a position to formally announce and celebrate our Winter 2025/26 winners.  As with last season, we lost some of the West League competition (there are exciting plans in place for winter 26/27 with some cracking new venues being considered) but there was still some very competitive racing across the board with a total of 62 senior/U20 Harriers putting a toe on the line at least once at a league event this winter – well done to everyone, but especially to all of our winners who will receive their prizes at the Awards Night next Friday night.

Our U20 leagues were sadly very poorly supported this season and there are plans to amalgamate them with the main senior league next season with a tweak to cover the separate races at Nationals, but this absolutely does not detract from the quality of running produced by our U20 men’s winner Jamie Work who completed 6 events with a number of podium finishes and team medals along the way, and U20 women’s winner Eve Starritt who completed a fabulous 9 events and also picked up senior team medals – fabulous to see these young athletes coming up through the ranks and mixing it with the seniors!

The senior leagues were hotly contested, and with 8 races to count the points ended up being pretty close at the top in the men’s league.  Jonathon Downey emerged triumphant, scoring the maximum available across 8 (including the bonus point events) of 95 points (119 in total across all races).  Jonathon also secured a number of outright race wins whilst doing this – great running!  In second place and 1st V50 was John Speirs with 81 points, and third place went to Greig Glendinning with 64 points.  Greig is also a V50 athlete, showing the depth we have with our Masters athletes currently.  Gary Martin took the prize for top V40 with 54 points – well done all.

For the ladies, it was Morgan McBurnie who came out on top with 81 scoring points (94 in total) – it’s been great to see Morgan back out competing consistently and her hard work has been justly rewarded with this win.  Second place (and 1st V40) went to ladies captain Jennifer Beattie with 51 points, and fellow V40 athlete Lynsey O’Connor was third just behind with 50 points.  It was great to see so many ladies having a go this year, with 27 athletes completing at least one race.  Hopefully we can top that in 2026/2027!

There were no further age group prizes awarded as nobody in age groups not mentioned ran the requisite 5 events to be eligible for a prize.

All awards will be presented at the Awards Night at the Park Hotel on Friday the 13th – if you cannot attend please let us know and we will arrange for your award to be presented at training.