A fashionable start to cross-country season
FOURWAYS – The cross-country runners of Fourways High School are ready to go at the beginning of the season with an unexpected sponsorship.
The Fourways High School‘s cross-country runners are all geared up and ready to start racing with a donation of official team shirts from Hirsch’s Fourways.
“We decided to adopt Fourways High as our school to look after in the area,” explained Sharron Dingle, the public relations officer for Hirsch’s in Pineslopes. “It’s a really great school, the children are all so well mannered and helpful. Allan Hirsch [owner and founder of Hirsch’s Homestore] himself approved the sponsorship.”
The idea forms part of Hirsch’s aim to be involved in their surrounding communities, and it was the Fourways branch in particular that chose to take the local school under their wing. On the day three representatives from the store – Dingle, assistant manager Chrissie Nortman and Ricardo Gounden, who works as a salesman, visited the school for the handover.
The store donated 50 shirts in total to be worn by the schoolchildren and staff at official events throughout the cross-country season, which has just begun and lasts through the winter months. It is both an individual and team sport and distances run during competition are between 4 and 6km long.
“Training lasts all year, and our team runs every day from Monday to Friday,” explained Marcel Viljoen of Fitness From Africa who has coached cross-country and athletics at Fourways High for about 13 years. “We have four teams at the school – a senior team for girls, a senior team for boys, a junior team for boys and a junior team for girls.”
The junior teams are made up of players from Grade 8 and 9, while the senior teams are made up of players in Grade 10, 11 and 12. Competitions happen at the district level first, before the top individuals from these rounds run in the next round of competition, which is the eight leagues spaced out over a period of months.
“Children who do well can also be awarded school colours in cross-country.
“As a sport, it is a platform that children can use to go somewhere in life. A number of former schoolchildren have gone on to get scholarships to universities.”
Last year three runners from the school qualified for the leagues: Nicholas van Zijl for the senior boys, Nadya Stolarczy for junior girls and Lugisa Masondo for junior boys.
Talk to us about this story by emailing our news editor at sarahk@caxton.co.za
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