Thursday 24^th September 2026 – The sun was shining, the course was set and the children were excited! Teams from Plympton St. Maurice, Old Priory and St. Matthew’s came along to Plympton Academy this afternoon to take part in our annual Cross Country warm-up event. As well as show casing some of the vast talent that our young people have, this was an opportunity for us to celebrate some of the schools games values: Self Belief and Determination.

We had 66 children taking part and every one of them was determined to do their best and finish the course. This was our first year running this event at our new venue and the course proved to be quite deceptive – at first glance it looks fairly flat with one short but steep incline – the long grass definitely played a factor as well in draining those legs. For both the Y5/6 and Y3/4 age groups it was two laps of the course but the younger children had a shortened version of the course. All of the children dug deep and there were definitely some relieved faces when they crossed the finish line. Well done to every one of you—all of your teachers and family that came to cheer you on were so proud of you and they were great races to watch. As the runners came over the line they were given a place card and these were collated by their staff—the top 4 runners from all schools were counted and the school with the overall lowest score for the boys and girls were the winners. Congratulations to Old Priory – I am not sure we have ever had 1 school take all 4 top-spots before – what are you feeding those children?! Awesome effort – well done all. As well as the team competition, the children who finished in the top 3 in each race received a medal: Congratulations to Willow/Nara and Oife from Old Priory for being the top 3 in the Y3/4 Girls race; and to Carter (Plympton St. Maurice)/Ben (St. Matthew’s) and Jaxon (Old Priory) for taking the top-spot for the Y3/4 boys. Congratulations to Emily (Old Priory)/Heather (Plympton St. Maurice)/ Nina (Old Priory) as well as Dylan (St. Matthew’s)/Ollie (Old Priory) and Nolan for the winning girls and boys in the Y5/6 races. Excellent performances all round! Well done to all of the children who took part today – you should be incredibly proud of yourselves no matter what positioned you finished and I really hope you enjoyed it. A full table of results can be found below. I would like to say a special thank you to the young leaders from Plympton Academy who volunteered to be our marshals and hares—you did a great job, thank you. A special thank you as well to the Plympton Academy site team, Miss Trevorrow and Miss Wilson for all of your help making this a great event for our Primary schools.

 Mrs Claire Cormack

Plymouth School Sports Partnership

Chaddlewood took 2^nd spot as they had a higher placed runner.