Calder Valley Juniors brought the curtain down on yet another season of good racing in fine style with their annual presentation evening taking place at St Michaels Church Hall in Mytholmroyd on Saturday night.

The event saw over 70 people gather to celebrate not only the amazing success of the talented group of junior athletes but equally importantly recognise the huge effort that each junior puts in. With this in mind the evening got under way with some fun and games before handing out a memento for all members of the club. The evenings trophy ceremony was regularly interspersed with more games & fine dining. We were honoured to have with us on the evening one of the founder members of Calder Valley John “Bod” Riley who was thrilled to be able to give out the awards. John is the official club archivist and will no doubt have been making a note of the winners for his records in years to come.

Each year apart from providing weekly coaching and running sessions Calder Valley encourages its juniors to put this into practice in both local and national races, the results from 12 selected races comprise the club championship and it is these results which determine the champions in each age group as well as this year for the first time a “Champion of Champions”

All those who took part in any of the championships races were rewarded before the evening got down to the serious business of handing out eagerly awaited cups and trophies. A full list of winners can be found on the junior section of Calder Valleys website at www.juniors.cvfr.co.uk/junior-championships/club-championships/

This year the instigation of an overall winner lead to new prizes being created. We were lucky enough to receive generous sponsorship from Active Human who donated vouchers for our winners to stock up on warm winter running kit. As well as this the original makers of fell running shoes Walsh very kindly paid for the new Champion of Champion trophy which is a wonderful inspirational framed picture of Stoodley Pike. The first recipient of this award was Olivia Sylge.

Above and beyond our own club championships we are able to recognise the achievements of some of our older juniors. Max Wharton, Edan Whitelaw and Jack Denton were all selected to represent Yorkshire in the Intercounties race. Jack went on from there to earn his first International vest representing England in the Home International event which is a race between England, Scotland Ireland and Wales with this years race taking place in Scotland. Max also gained further international honours being selected to run for both England and Great Britain however with the events overlapping he opted to race for Great Britain in the World Mountain Running championships where he helped the Great Britain junior men to a fantastic Bronze medal.

So as the memory of a good night fades its back to Tues nights n the cold and wet for regular weekly training for our fantastic juniors as they get ready to do it all again next year.