ISAZ Cross Country

Caitlin at the finish

Once again Amano was host to the ISAZ Northern Region cross country meet. This year Lechwe, Simba and Ndola Trust attended and Lifesong Orphanage and Abba's Heart were invited as guests, so running in the same races but competing in a different category. The secondary course was 5km through Amano bush and the route was the reverse of our first meet five years ago. U13's ran a new distance of 3kms, which enables the race to include a few natural obstacles like the flowing stream to add interest to the beautiful bush.

As always, first off were the U13 teams. This year Amano could field 2 boys teams and 1 girls team. These teams compete for individual medals but also their combined score is used to determine the winner for the U13 Trophy. This year ISAZ winners were Ndola Trust on 134pts. Lifesong won both boys and girls races with a combined score of 47pts! The Amano boys came 3rd on 72pts with a very good effort from Xavier who came in 4th place. Given he was sick the whole week this is an excellent show of determination. A number of other boys stepped into the team at the last minute to make a good all round effort. The girls finished with 99 points so in last place. This is good given the fact that most of this team will still compete next year. Natalie came in 14th place as the first Amano girl so a tough competition for them.

The Open Challenge begins

 The Open competition had 2 Amano girls teams and 3 boys teams. Newcomer to Amano this year is Rosemary, who did extremely well coming in first place by a good margin. This was backed up by the rest of the A team (Diana 5th, Kathleen 6th, Fernulla 11th and Janki 12th) and so first place was secured for Amano on 38pts. The B team also put in a solid performance with a 4th place finish (96pts), Lechwe's A and B teams coming in between. The Boys fared just as well with James coming in first place and backed up by Jackson 5th, Ilunga 6th, Fungai 9th and Mwansa 11th to secure the Open Trophy for Amano on 70pts overall.

James and Diana victorious

 It is a great opportunity to get town kids out and enjoy God's creation. Amano has been blessed with a lot of land for a Copperbelt school and feedback this year was positive from visiting school students that they "enjoyed" the experience, well as much as anyone could enjoy racing for 5kms!
 Well done to our students. It was a better finish for our primaries, so things look good for next year, and our secondaries retained the trophy. We thank the other schools for traveling, and our board for being positive about hosting such events.

Report by Mr Grove