BOK finished 8th in the Compass Sport Cup Final at the weekend, a slightly disappointing result after last year's 3rd place, but we were down on numbers this year, fielding only 40 runners in total and only 7 Juniors. The day saw variable performances and some unexpected results, with many finding the bramble undergrowth hard going. There were some excellent runs amongst the team, in particular Clive Hallett finished 8th out of 125 on the Brown course, less than a minute off 3rd place and only 2 minutes down on Oli Johnson in 2nd. Mark Saunders and Alice Bedwell put in strong performances on the Blue Men and Blue Women courses and Jackie Hallett, Dudley Budden and Sally Thomas scored highly on Green Women, Green Men and Short Green Vets. Those Juniors we had did well, with Jamie Hayward and Isla Simmons scoring on Light Green and Michael Hallett, Jack Kelsey and Shona Simmons all scoring on Orange. Your club captains' slight misjudgment of potential scorers (resulting in a late change for Alice Bedwell to run Blue instead of Green) probably lost us 20 points, but fortunately this didn't affect our overall finishing position - we'll know for next time.
Regardless of the result, the BOK team enjoyed a fine social weekend, with 20 people travelling by coach (driven by Trevor Griffiths) and 25 staying overnight at Eyam Youth Hostel. The food was excellent and everyone (except Christophe) thoroughly enjoyed the rugby. The travel arrangements on Sunday left a little to be desired as the coach broke down and had to be replaced for the return journey, but hopefully the push-start out of the garage on the way to the event and the slightly delayed departure after the event won't put people off doing this again! Many thanks are due to Trevor for not only volunteering to drive, but also for sorting out the problems efficiently with the minimal loss of time (while also managing to turn in a fine score on his course).
All in all it was a good weekend and it was pleasing to see a new M21 (Tom Cochrane) running for the club. Hopefully we can recruit a few more and look forward to making the final again next year. Many thanks to all who took part. Full results are here.
