Cross Country Championships 2017
Norfolk County Show Ground, Norwich - Saturday 18th March 2017
The 57th Boys and 49th Girls New Balance English Schools' Cross Country Championship is to take place atNorfolk County Showground on Saturday 18th March 2017.
Find all information about the Showground, and how to get there.
Google Earth: simply search for Norfolk County Showground.
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Click the map to find Norfolk County Showground To find directions from your home to the showground, enter postcode NR5 0TT as the destination. From the North and West follow the A47 East to the Norwich Southern Bypass at the A1074 Longwater Interchange. From the South and East take the A11 from London and beyond or A140 from Ipswich, take the A47 westbound and follow the signs for Norfolk Showground and English Schools Cross Country Event.
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Parking
There will be yellow AA signs giving directions to the public parking areas. See the site layout shown below for details. Note that Norwich City will be playing at home and most of the football traffic will also be travelling along the A47, so please allow plenty of time to get there.
Disabled AccessReserved parking space will allocated as close to the finish as possible. You need to reserve your space before the event. Blue badge holders who wish to apply for a car park pass should email Paul Allison (allison.pa@nottinghamhigh.co.uk) Please provide your car registration number and email address and a pass with be emailed.
Timetable
PresentationsIt is envisaged that the Team Race presentations will take place during the afternoons races. There will be announcements made to keep you aware of the times of the Team Race presentations.
Championship notes for the start of each raceCompetitors should assemble in the marquee behind the start area in plenty of time before their race.Competitors will be allowed into the start area 5 minutes before the beginning of each race. A warning will be given 3 minutes before each race. At this time, competitors should assemble behind their start pen. With 1 minute to go competitors will be instructed to move into their start pen and line up in race order by the Start Stewards. Competitors should listen carefully to any last moment instructions given by the Starter. The start will be by gun. Numbers must be securely pinned on the front of the County vest. Any mutilation or folding of these numbers may lead to disqualification |
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Site Layout and Course Map
Race distances are approximate and are subject to change depending on ground conditions.
County Coaches
As with any cross country event, athletes need to be aware that they might very easily finish the day quite muddy, so they must ensure that they have a clean change of clothing and footwear so that they can be allowed back on their team coach - coach companies really don't appreciate having their brand new coach seats and floors being wrecked! We recommend bringing suffient plastic bags to wrap up any kit that might cause damage to any coach interior.
Notes for Parents
Competing for your County Team can be a life-changing experience for children. For some, it is a stepping stone to future glory. For many, it will be the pinnacle of achievement.For parents who may be concerned about what exactly is involved, we have prepared a document detailing what to expect, what not to expect, and a few indications of how things are, and why.
Only athletes and their County team managers are permitted in the start and finish areas.
All ESAA events are conducted under the rules of UK Athletics (now referred to as British Athletics). You can find all their rules at www.british.athletics.org.uk.
County Team Lists
Whilst every effort is made to ensure that names are spelled correctly, mistakes do sometimes occur. Competitors are asked to check these lists so that their name appears correctly in the programme, on the tee-shirts, and in the results. Everything to do with the event is prepared automatically from these lists so if your name is wrong here, it will be wrong everywhere!Please ask your friends/colleagues/pupils to check the spellings of their names. Changes notified to us by noon on Sunday 5th March will appear in the programme, on teeshirts and in the results. Any errors notified after that time will appear correctly in the results, but will be too late to be included in the programme or on teeshirts.
Please don't keep re-sending emails requesting spelling changes, one email is quite sufficient. Because of the high volume of mail we receive at this time of year we don't have time to reply to them. The team lists shown here won't be regularly updated with spelling changes - we need to split out the entry lists to go to the various printers and processors and it is too time-consuming to re-edit all the files here as well as those we use to go to print. This is an extremely busy time for us, however, spelling changes will be made in the files we use for printed material and results production.
If you find any spelling errors, please notify us immediately giving your County, Age Group, and the correct spelling.
Avon Bedfordshire Berkshire Buckinghamshire Cambridgeshire Cheshire Cleveland Cornwall Cumbria Derbyshire Devon Dorset Durham Essex Gloucestershire Greater Manchester Hampshire and Vectis Hereford & Worcestershire Hertfordshire Humberside Kent Lancashire Leicestershire & Rutland Lincolnshire London Merseyside Middlesex Norfolk Northamptonshire Northumberland North Yorkshire Nottinghamshire Oxfordshire Shropshire Somerset South Yorkshire Staffordshire Suffolk Surrey Sussex Warwickshire West Midlands West Yorkshire Wiltshire Channel Islands Isle of Man
The nature of County teams means that the team managers aren't in daily contact with athletes and quite often they've never come across them before. In such cases it is all too easy to hear a name by phone and spell it as one thinks it should be - sometimes schools don't have the correct spellings in their own files. Some names just have too many spellings - even William Shakespeare couldn't spell his own name consistently from day to day!
Look at some the variations just of firstnames we've seen in recent years - all of these have been verified to be real:
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...the list of alternative surname spellings is just too long to publish here but Johnson, Jonson, Johnston, or Johnstone; Thompson, Thomson, or Tompson; and Howarth or Haworth are regulars! Then there's the whole load of Mc and Mac families to recognise.
Finally, thanks to Tom Cox, Ben Cox and Tom Guy who have the easiest names to check!
Permissible Clothing
The ESAA Competition Rule 7 [i.e. that applies to ALL ESAA competitions] in the ESAA Handbook states:- In all Championships competitors must wear at least vest and shorts (or equivalent clothing) in registered County Colours which are clean and so designed and worn, as not to be objectionable even if wet. All visible clothing must conform with registered County colours.
To deal with some specific queries therefore:
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Anti-Doping
All ESAA competitions are subject to the strict anti-doping policies of British Athletics and IAAF. Further information can be found on the ESAA anti-doping page.
Health & Safety
Athletes are advised that Health & Safety regulations recommend that you should examine the course for potential hazards before competing.The course will be checked by the organisers and a risk assessment conducted. A final inspection will be made on the morning of the event and any issues arising will be addressed then.
The course is on mixed-use land which is grazed by farm animals. As a matter of normal daily life, we advise that athletes and spectators check that they are up to date with anti-tetanus injections - don't forget that you need a booster jab every 10 years.
Any competitor who has concerns about a safety aspect on the course should bring it to the attention of the organisers immediately. If the issue cannot be resolved satisfactorily, the competitor will be advised not to participate in the event.
Photographs and Videos
Photographs of ESAA events might be published in the athletics press, local media, and on this website. All ESAA photographs are taken in accordance with the guidelines relating to photos in schools published by the Information Commissioner with regard to the Data Protection Act 1998.Photographs and videos can be taken by the public from public areas for personal use only. They may not be published in any form (including on personal or club websites) without written permission from the ESAA.
Most ESAA competitions are held on private land and are therefore deemed to be 'not public' areas. All ESAA events are SCHOOL events and are therefore covered by regulations governing what can and can't be done in schools. One important point therefore is that you are not allowed to take photographs of school activities for commercial publication without specific written permission from event organisers. This is no different to the fact that one cannot simply walk onto a school playing field and start taking and publishing photos - most parents, and the Information Commissioner, would strongly agree that school activities should not be published unless publication is under strict control.
Photographers at ESAA events wishing to publish photos in the media or in any other form (eg. internet websites), or wishing to use them for anything other than personal use must be officially registered and accredited by the ESAA, and register the use to which photos will be put, and to obtain permission for that use. Permission WILL be retrospectively withdrawn if anyone is found to be in breach of the uses which they registered with us, and under such circumstances, the offender will be required to delete all images they hold from our events.
This therefore precludes operators who simply turn up, make videos, then publish them with associated advertising which is outside of our control. No one has permission to do this unless they have written consent from the ESAA.
We are aware that some people register themselves as press photographers then publish complete videos of our events online, and even make their broadcasts available for sale. This is very specifically not allowed. In effect, they are broadcasting companies making television programmes without our permission. It doesn't matter how they publish their content, whether by television over the air or via the internet, or via DVD. The fact they broadcast our event content to the world makes them broadcasters.
To be an accreditted broadcaster for the ESAA, they need to be properly established companies, properly registered and regulated by the broadcasting authorities, and they need to be properly registered with the Information Commissioner. Also, in order to sell their content they need to have been given written permission to sell what is our copyright, and pay the necessary royalties due to us. They also need to comply with the UK Distance Selling Regulations in order to take payments from the public. There is also the very important fact that under the rules of UK athletics, televised athletics events in the UK need to be authorised by the UK Governing Body. The ESAA operates under these rules.
A list of officially accredited photographers will be published on this website shortly after the event along with their contact details.
It is not possible to prevent photographs of any particular individual from appearing in the media. If this is a problem for you, you are advised not to take part in the event. If any parent wishes a particular picture of their child appearing on this website to be removed please contact us and we will do our best to resolve any problem.