PECO 2023/24
The 2023/24 Cross Country season comes to an end and it was a great one for STAC.
Over 60 runners from the club took part, including some for the first time from last year's Beginners course.
It was a great PECO for STAC:
Men's team 1st in First Division and promoted to Premier Division
Men's vets team 3rd overall in the Premier Division
Ladies and Ladies vets team succesfully avoided relegation from both leagues!
Dan Garbutt 1st overall
Emma Ballantyne 1st age cat (and 4th lady overall)
Dave Parker 1st age cat
Jamie Graham & Lynn Fletcher 3rd age cat
To see how we compare with yesteryear, Andrew Gardner has pulled together all team positions and age cat winners going back to 2009/10 (you may need to open the below spreadsheet to see it properly):
Results are taken from the PECO website. Unfortunately they do not go further back than 2009.
Some further information from Andrew "Historically, from 1992 until 2007, the cross-country league was sponsored by Sport Direct, which was PECO's immediate and direct predecessor. I believe the name was changed for a couple of reasons, the emergence of the similarly named Sports Direct, and the business had diversified into corporate workwear as well as sports kit (PECO is actually Print & Embroidery COmpany). I remember STAC hosting a cross-country race in December 1991, but do not remember the name of the league at that time."
From speaking to Andrew, Alan Schofield and Chris Gill we believe that Dan Garbutt was the first STAC to be men's individual winner, as his wife Sarah was in the lady's the year before. Alan himself has finsihed 2nd!
PECO has grown a lot over the years both for STAC and overall. Looking back at 2009/10 there was usually 200-250 runners when it can be 800 these days. In the early days STAC used to sometime struggle to get enough to run!
The PECO key results will now be maintained in the Awards section of the website.