JHI 2025

Junior Home International 2025

Each year in October, we send our best and brightest to compete for Ireland at the Junior Home International - the annual competition between England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Traditionally, its actually two sub-competitions - England usually competing closely with Scotland for the overall win, and Ireland competing with Wales for the Judith Wingham Trophy. This years event was held in South Wales, in the area of the Brecons just south of the town of Brecon itself. We were able to field an almost full team - just short a single W14 - and the team we sent were in good shape, and primed to do well. We ran a series of training events between the team selection in Aug aimed at practicing the particular skills we would need to use in the terrain selected for the competition - navigation over open terrain using contours and compass, and head-to-head relay racing. These were well attended, and the team going to Wales this year were in as good a shape as they could have been. A huge thank you to all the juniors for their prep work in that period - I notice and appreciate all the hard work and hours you guys put in.

One of the hardest parts of organising the JHI is working out the logistics of getting 24 juniors and 6-8 parents to the right place at the right time. This year was no different, and we travelled over using a variety of methods. A Cork/Waterford group flew and drove via Manchester, several carloads took the ferry from Dublin, the lads from Switzerland flew to Birmingham, and were picked up by one of the UK based families, traveling by car. We all eventually converged at Plas Pencilli, our outdoor centre home for the weekend. The Irish team had a building all to ourselves, splitting up in to rooms of 1-4 people. We had plenty of showers, a drying room, room to run around outside, and good food all weekend, so 10/10 to the organisers for a job well done here.

Saturday morning arrived, and it was time to get our game faces on. The Individual race took place on Merthyr Common, and area of fast runnable limestone hillside - areas of short grass (not dissimilar to the Curragh), combined with technical rocky sections, and some rougher areas higher up (but not too rough - still very fast). The weather was perfect - overcast, no real wind, cool. We had some great runs on this day, best of the bunch being Liam O'Donnell finishing a very close second in M16, just seconds behind Marcus Perry. Eve Buckley came second in W18, but there was no complaints in being beaten by Emily Atkinson who is having a great season overall. Fionnuala Rowe also claimed a very respectable fourth place in W16.

Full results for day 1: https://swoc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/results/JHI2025/JHIday1.html
LiveLox: https://www.livelox.com/Events/Show/171027/JHI-2025

The Welsh team suffered from a lack of numbers this year, and by the end of the first day, we were 26 points ahead of them on overall points, and only 22 points behind Scotland - a testament to a great overall team performance.

On Saturday evening, we had a communal dinner in a local village hall, followed by the traditional Ceilidh (twmpath in Welsh!) dancing. A great night was had by all, but potentially this was the super-spreader event that eventually took out half the team on their return to Ireland. The kids will probably still tell you it was worth it.

Sunday arrived, and we packed up and cleaned the accommodation, before setting off for Clydach Terrace for the relay competition. Our teams had been selected solely based on the previous days results, and everyone was hyped up and ready for another day of racing. We had some great runs, especially by newcomers Corin Russell (M14) and Imogen Satherley (W14) at second leg, helping both teams come home to fifth place finishes - a great achievement. Overall, we had no mispunches, so I didnt get to eat any of the Juniors sweets on them, and we were very happy with the performance of the teams.

Full Relay Results: https://swoc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/results/JHI2025/JHIDay2.html
LiveLox: https://www.livelox.com/Events/Show/171325/JHI-2025-Relay

Overall, this cemented our third placing, and meant that we would retain the Judith Wingham Trophy for another year.

The other trophy we award each year is the perpetual plate for overall best Irish performance - this year, we awarded it to Liam O'Donnell for his individual and relay performances - well done!

In the overall competition, it once again went down to the wire - this year was a mirror of last years result, with England and Scotland tying on points after the relays, but England being awarded the win for having more individual wins than Scotland. Congrats to them!

With all the prize-givings done, we all headed back to the cars, and headed our separate ways. Once again, I'd like to thank all the juniors for their hard work, dedication and great behavior over the weekend. I'd also like to thank all the parents for their support, especially those who were willing and able to come along on the weekend to look after the team. Finally, a big thank you to the Welsh Junior Squad for organizing the JHI this year, it was a banger. Looking forward to next year already!

There's an album of photos from the weekend here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/AfbTxWzt8KJPz4XW8 - I've used several of Will Heaps images in this report, many thanks!

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