Abingdon AC Awards Evening 2025
Saturday saw our club members coming together to celebrate 2024’s achievements at our annual awards evening. This year we had a change in venue to Abingdon Schools Pavillion which meant not only an increase in attendees and a better more accessible layout but a bar too! As you can expect the change went down very well with the attendees.
The Junior awards section saw a change in presentation style as well with awards being given out by the coaches for each group. Evey Powell was awarded best Senior Endurance Competition Group Female athlete, who despite suffering from stress fractures in both legs sequentially over the last 2 years, came back to finish fourth in the National XC championship. Beatrix Bewick picked up two awards bagging Best Female Athlete in the Junior Endurance Competition Group and the new Spirit Award for the Transitions group. Dominic Smith continued to amass accolades with his Javelin throwing, picking up Best Male Athlete for the U17 and Senior Track and Field groups. Maria Jammeh Kinteh also picked up an award for her abilities in Javelin, Receiving the Most Improved Athlete Award for the Speed Development Squad. Mia Gore and Jack Lindsay, two of the clubs rising stars, picked up Best Female and Best Male Athlete Awards respectively in the Fundamentals group, as well as a collection of certificates. The Jack Conan Cup was awarded to Maelo Moulin Garrigues for representing the club on the road, track, and cross-country circuit over the years. The Ivor Hopkins XC Trophy was awarded to Nick Langrish who, despite having only joined the club in early 2024, has been a consistent distance runner for the club.
In the adult athlete’s section of the evening Mark Lewy and Kate Allred took the overall Men’s and Women’s club champs prize. This year saw for the first time in a while the crowning of a VM70 club champs award for James Wigmore and an U20M award for Maelo Moulin Garrigues. The Motivation Award went to Graham Lougher for a second year in a row having competed in 21 Club Champs fixtures in 2024. The awards for Best Female and Male Athlete Awards in the Vets League were given to Liz Fraser and Mark Kingston, respectively.
The Ivor Hopkins Volunteering Award was given to Jon Bones, for all his coaching work on the track and his volunteering in the XC league, ensuring that our athletes can focus solely on the race ahead at each meeting. The Tad Kawakubo Trophy was given to Cordelia Parker who has broken the club’s female marathon record twice in two consecutive years, with a time of 2h 51m in the 2023 London Marathon and then a time of 2h 49m in the 2024 Valencia Marathon.
Cordelia Parker received the Tad Kawakubo Trophy for her club record breaking performance in the Valencia Marathon.
The final Award of the night was the Noel Blatchford Personality Award, voted for by attendees on the night to the person that is believed to embody the ethos of the club. With a third of the votes, mainly from the younger attendees, Jon Bones Bagged his second trophy of the evening.
Jon Bones picked up both the Ivor Hopkins Volunteering Trophy and the Noel Blatchford Personality Award.
